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The New World 


BY 

G. MURRAY ATKIN 

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Author of “Flowers of the Wind 


NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 





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Copyright, 1921 , ' ^ ^ 

By THOMAS Y. CEO WELL COMPANY ' . 

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TO 

If. A. 1. 

I dedicate this book to you in memory of those evenings, 
when we have discussed together the relative importance 
of action and character in literature. As you know I am 
one of those for whom character exists much more forcibly 
than action. The action in life leaves me indifferent. 
Character holds me spellbound. I do not hope that 
you will be convinced. I know that you will understand. 




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CONTENTS 
PART ONE 

The Rise to Manhood i 

PART TWO 

The Reins of Office 87 

PART THREE 

The Roads of Chance 185 

PART FOUR 

Dante’s Message 247 






PART ONE 


THE RISE TO MANHOOD 

‘‘The Book of Life begins with a man 
and a woman in a garden.” 

Oscar Wilde, 






THE NEW WORLD 


CHAPTER I 

I F Giovanni Ricci had been asked to classify 
himself, he would have said that he was a 
dilettante, an amateur of life, a leisurely lover 
of beautiful things, but in the eyes of the parish 
where he lived, he was a failure, a man of no occupa- 
tion, in somewhat straitened circumstances. “He 
lives meanly on his means,” said some of the vil- 
lagers. “It would be better if he worked and con- 
tributed to the common life of the Municipality,” 
said others. Yet in a measure with the life he lived, 
Giovanni was content. He loved the tumbled-down 
gray house he inhabited. He loved the wind that 
came to dry the wheat. He loved the birds that flew 
across the sky and in the autumn he loved the 
whirring of the partridges and the rustling of the 
leaves. As far as externals went Giovanni wanted 
no other form of life than this. 

On winter evenings when the wind whistled down 
the chimney and out of doors went the unhalting 
storm, he loved to sit — his pipe in his mouth, his 
chair drawn close to his small and carefully chosen 
bookshelf of books, dreaming of the things and 


2 


THE NEW WORLD 


people, that seemed to him so real. But more than 
his winter evening dreams, more than the drowsing 
summer days, more than the rain that beat upon the 
open furrows of the soil, more than the wind with 
the power of God behind it, Giovanni Ricci loved 
his little son Dante. And he lived entirely unaware 
of the criticisms of his fellow villagers. He did not 
care for money, nor power, nor position. He lived 
like the lilies of the field betrayed by the emotion of 
life. 

But the spirit, the mocking spirit that lurks for the 
unwary, played him a cruel joke when Giovanni mar- 
ried Helena, for Helena had no emotion whatever. 
Her nearest approach to it was a passionless pursuit 
of the rites of religion. Giovanni’s skin was dark and 
his eyes were brown and to him Helena’s fairness 
conveyed an ethereal and spiritual quality, until, stiff 
and expressionless, Helena was installed in her new 
home, then the mocking spirit laughed, his sardonics 
were satisfied, Giovanni’s little score was paid. 

“Beechcroft” was the name of their house, but it 
ought really to have been called the “Melting Pot,” 
because there day by day fate made Giovanni from 
something that he was, into something that he nat- 
urally was not. The rooms were furnished mainly 
with furniture that he had sent out from England, 
and the chairs, like the master of the house, had a 
strange air of aloofness from their surroundings* 
The house stood back from the road, hidden by high 
garden walls, a feature of the older countries Gio- 
vanni insisted upon. 


THE NEW WORLD 


3 


“They hide me,” he said, “with their feathers,” 
and chuckled that Helena did not understand the 
metaphor. The villagers could not see through the 
garden walls, but through the iron gates, they often 
caught sight of a tall figure in a tweed shooting jacket 
pacing with his hands in his pockets up and down the 
avenue. Later on they saw a younger figure walking 
beside the tall one, but that is going ahead of my 
story. 

The wind whistled down the chimney and the 
rain ran down the face of the old stone house, on the 
night that Dante was born. 

Giovanni did not want the child. It seemingly 
bound him to Helena and Giovanni knew that noth- 
ing could ever really bind him to Helena, because she 
was cold and selfish and without emotion. So he sat 
before the fire with his head sunk on his chest and the 
flames mocked him. 

Strange thoughts went through his mind. This 
room, with its large fireplace, its comfortable chairs, 
was home. And yet it was not home because it 
lacked the quality that sometimes makes a shabby, 
poor room into a paradise. Such mocking flames. 
All night Giovanni sat in his chair, his head sunk on 
his chest. The evening stars paled in the sky. One 
of the lamps flickered and went out. The hardness 
in his heart seemed to permeate his whole body, still 
he sat motionless. He waited. The door opened 
and a woman stood on the sill. Giovanni waited. 

“It is a boy,” said the woman in a business-like 
manner. 


4 


THE NEW WORLP 


The tension continued. His heart did not bound. 
Still it was heavy as if the hardness would never go 
out of it. He threw another log on the fire and 
again the flames mocked him. He arose and walked 
heavily to the window. Drawing aside the curtain 
he looked out to the dawn. His body was stiff with 
intensity. The arm that gripped the curtain ached. 
Giovanni’s life was closing in on itself. His gaze 
traveled out to the world and returned empty. There 
was no consolation. His heart was hard. 

3|i >K * sif * 

The sun lay white over the tops of the trees and 
tipped the edge of the cradle where Dante was lying. 
The baby was sick and restless, crying when he was 
put down. Mrs. Ricci had thrust him into the cradle 
and gone downstairs, saying on no account must the 
baby be lifted from the cradle. Giovanni had sel- 
dom seen a baby cry, but he saw one now. He saw 
his son lift his little fist, turn his head to one side, 
stretch himself, and begin to wail again. 

Suddenly looking at him, something fluttered in 
Giovanni’s heart. He stooped. Carefully with his 
big hands, he drew down the blanket, then very care- 
fully he put both hands under the baby’s back and 
slowly, very slowly, he lifted the tiny body until it 
lay against his shoulder. Miracle of miracles, the 
baby stopped crying. Still, its body was torn inter- 
mittently with short convulsive shudders, but the 
crying, the miserable wailing ceased. In Giovanni’s 
heart came again that little flutter and instantly all 


THE NEW WORLD 


5 


the nerves of his body relaxed as if the sun streaming 
through the window had melted his soul. 

Helena came upstairs. 

‘T understood I asked you not to,” she said, com- 
ing over and standing beside him. There was some- 
thing in her tone which irritated Giovanni, it stirred 
in him a glimmer of resistance. 

“It is not possible. I couldn’t hear the little chap 
cry.” 

This seemed to annoy Helena. Her small eyes 
narrowed a little. “Why not?” she asked coldly. 
“Your son must be taught self-control.” 

Giovanni turned on her, ready to argue the matter, 
but he met her cold, steady eye, and he shrugged his 
shoulders. 

He hated Helena at that moment. He hated her 
tawny hair and her small, mean head. Again, very 
gently, he laid his hands one above the other on the 
baby’s back and carefully, very carefully, he lowered 
his shoulder until Dante lay on his outstretched 
palms. Then with the same timid anxiety, he low- 
ered his hands until the little body lay flat in its 
cradle, when he drew his hands from under the 
child’s back. 

Dante knitted his forehead. Again he cried. 

“He is not to be touched,” said Helena, moving 
away. “It is just temper. You will please be good 
enough to let him have his cry out.” 

Giovanni stood by the cradle watching. He 
cracked his fingers, but without effect. The baby 
cried on. He took out his watch and dangled it 


6 THE NEW WORLD 

without avail, but at last gradually as though from 
weariness, the sobbing grew slower. Again Gio- 
vanni shook his watch, so that it clicked upon its 
chain, and Dante’s deep blue eyes looked up, but in 
them was the dawn of reality and they were heavy 
with pain. 

From that day something entered into Giovanni’s 
life which had not been there before. In spite of 
Helena, his son was his son. Again his heart was 
alive in his breast, but because of Helena he did not 
dare to show his affection openly. 

He sometimes saw his little son hurt and crushed 
in spirit and he learned to stand aside, to make no 
show of sympathy, because he apprehended his inter- 
ference only brought more discipline upon him. 

“What am I going to do?” he asked himself. And 
fulfilling the established purpose of his life he did 
nothing. 

Meanwhile life urged itself upon Dante. Out- 
wardly life held no great contrasts to the petty 
details of daily routine, but inwardly it held glowing 
moments and fairy folk and its own undefined 
promise. Life’s promise helped most to satisfy him 
for the days that seemed so strangely bereft of ten- 
derness. 

In retrospect it was the absence of tenderness that 
mattered most. A Mother whose cold self-sufficiency 
was rather terrifying, a Mother who knew nothing 
of the dreams and games of a little boy. And a 
Father with the gift of gaming not gone, but oddly 
ashamed of being discovered pulling an ear, or mak- 


THE NEW WORLD 


7 

mg any demonstration of affection, oddly in subjec- 
tion to the reign of terror. 

So Dante passed from what the psychologists call 
the narcissus soul of infancy; the state when he was 
interested in his own feet and hands and personality 
as new stupendous discoveries to the state of cog- 
nizance of other people and objects. 

He became conscious of a mandarin on the mantle- 
piece, a nodding Buddha of his Mother’s that he 
hated. One day, awakening to the law of force, he 
threw a stone at it. It fell and lay on the floor in 
several pieces, but the upturned, grinning mask still 
mocked him. He did not take the stone and break it. 
It was characteristic of him that he only made one 
effort. 

It would have fared ill with his imagination if he 
had not had his Father. When he fell asleep at night 
with his mouth open, his last thoughts were the 
snatches of stories that his Father told him when 
Helena was not there. “Filling the child’s mind with 
nonsense,” Helena called them — those precious 
stories that Dante loved. Not creepy tales to make 
him cover his head with the eiderdown; old Spencer 
told that kind, but his Father’s stories that he lis- 
tened to so eagerly belonged to the Romantic school. 

Pacing up and down the Avenue, Giovanni would 
sometimes hear feet running after him and then an 
insistent hand would pull two or three times at his 
coat. 

“What is it, you young beggar?” he would say 
severely. 


8 


THE NEW WORLD 


“A story, Father. There is just time.” 

“Tut, tut. You don’t want a story. What sort 
of story?” 

“About the Knights of Mallory, Father,” gen- 
erally Dante replied. And as Giovanni drew a word 
picture of unquenchable chivalry, here and there he 
stole a look at Dante’s face and the look of admira- 
tion that was his reward when he got his hero out 
of some difficulty was greatly cherished, many a time 
Giovanni waited for it almost greedily. 

As the years drifted on Dante began to miss some- 
thing in his Father. A stronger will dominated him. 
Its influence penetrated even to his wardrobe. He 
wore more somber clothes. His gait lost its swagger. 
He dropped his sporting style. He, who in youth 
had shown flashes of tilting with the best, could no 
longer disguise that the battle was going against him, 
that his spirit was in full retreat. Dante ceased to 
count on his Father as a power of intervention in 
times of crisis. In the light of after years as he 
looked back, he saw the shambling man of forty-two 
and the little boy of twelve, an odd pair of accom- 
plices drawn together by the discordant vibrations of 
home; both anxious to evade the sweep of temper, a 
little hungry for affection, if only from each other, 
but daring only to touch hands furtively, daring only 
to exchange glances unseen. 

Dante’s sense of his father’s deficiency in the way 
of courage awakened, but his fathei’s very short- 
comings seemed to make him more dear to his son. 
Playing his games upon the floor, his square, chubby 


THE NEW WORLD 


9 

hands were often clenched in anger and his small 
mind full of invective for his mother. 

In shadowy battle the tin soldiers clattered on the 
wood. Artillery and cavalry, a hopeless mass as the 
attacking party was artfully enticed over desolate 
country, falling into every pitfall until the decimated 
columns were finally annihilated by the heavy bar- 
rage of the small, safely entrenched garrison. Such 
victory meant the establishment of justice to Dante, 
the final triumph of right over wrong. It was then 
Dante would put his thumb in his mouth and think of 
what he would do when he became a man. 

Isolated acts never came to the surface of his 
mind; it was chiefly a swelling of power in his depths. 
Later in youth it bothered him that he focused on 
no one thing, but in boyhood the dream was unde- 
fined and splendid. Vague, yet strong it was with 
him that the world waited like an orange for the 
clasp of his little hands. Influences swept in on him 
and life lured him on. Nobody seemed to have per- 
ceived this innate power. Outwardly he was a shy, 
gauche little boy: silent because the personality of 
strangers so fascinated him that he forgot to talk: 
awkward he was, and unequipped for the smoothing 
over of the ordinary situations of life. 

But always in childhood and through life the most 
wonderful thing to Dante was the strange swelling 
that came at intervals in his own soul. Sometimes it 
was beauty : a lovely face, a strain of music. Some- 
times it was joy, but often it was pain that touched a 
mysterious chord within him and induced an undulat- 


lO 


THE NEW WORLD 


ing wave in his soul. And when this mood came it 
seemed to detach him from life and he waited 
quietly, hardly breathing for the approach of an 
undefined reality that one day would not pass him by. 

Looking back on life it is hard to explain the 
absorbing of one phase by another, the transition 
from babyhood to boyhood. It is as though one for- 
gets, or as though the metamorphosis were too 
gradual to be arresting, but with Dante, he made his 
exit from childhood on the day his Father died. 

As he stood, after a hasty summons, at his 
Father’s bedside, Dante noticed one black sock cling- 
ing by its toe to the foot of the bed, the other had 
fallen to the floor. The room was ominously still 
and the air was charged with a smell of disinfectants. 
Over his Father was an old silk dressing gown with 
Charvet written in the collar. Dante’s eyes rested 
on the dressing gown, he was afraid of what he 
would see in his Father’s face. 

Giovanni Ricci lay on his back, his right hand rest- 
ing on the side of the bed. 

“Old man,” his Father said, and made a movement 
with his fingers. His son fell on his knees and laid 
his cheek against his Father’s hand. 

“I am going, Dante,” Giovanni said softly. Fie 
stopped and with his dry tongue tried to moisten his 
lips. Dante listened to his labored breathing. Out- 
side there was a quivering wind. The night light 
flickered in the basin. Giovanni had an impulse to 
confide in his boy, even in death with the weakness of 
the flesh that comes with death, his soul was very far 


THE NEW WORLD 


II 


from Helena. ‘T have not done what I might have 
done,” he said, beginning his confession. ‘T had 
ambitions. I let them die. Your Mother ” Gio- 

vanni stopped himself in time, no Ricci was ever 
disloyal. Even to each other they had never criti- 
cised Helena. 

“Your Mother was always too ” the brows of 

the sick man knitted while his mind searched for the 
right word. Dante saw the frown relax — “compre- 
hensive.” A smile touched Giovanni’s dry eyes. 
“Comprehensive,” was the right word. “It dwarfs 
a man to marry too comprehensive a woman. His 
confidence in himself goes. Come nearer, Danny, I 
can’t see.” There was a note of fear in his voice. 

A little tearing pain went through Dante’s heart. 

“How damp the wind is, Danny.” 

“The window is closed, Father.” 

“Yes. Yes. My feet are quite cold. It’s the 
draft from the door. Get a plan, Danny, and never 
swerve. Be strong and courageous. Don’t let life 
drive you back. Meet it bravely.” 

Giovanni’s voice became feeble. It seemed to 
come from a distance. 

“I’m afraid,” he half whispered. 

Dante’s small hands covered the twitching fingers. 
Giovanni had appealed to the protective Impulse in 
his son. 

“I’m here. Father,” he said with the muscles of his 
throat stiff. 

His Father looked at him. The distance between 
them was growing greater. “You’ve good stuff in 


12 


THE NEW WORLD 


you,” he said gently. He seemed to be trying to give 
his boy a final message. He made a movement as 
though he would draw himself up in bed. The black 
sock dropped to the floor as he regained a flash of 
splendor. He had a fit of coughing, which almost 
stifled him and he had to wait for a last wave of 
strength before he spoke. 

“Be a gentleman — always No matter what it 

costs you.” 

“Q, Daddy I” Dante realized this was parting. 

Giovanni’s look calmed him. His words came 
slowly and with difficulty. 

“A gentleman ” the dim eyes looked into the 

young eyes. 

“A gentleman ” A dog barked in the street 

below. The man on the bed waited for a recurring 
wave of strength. At last the words came quite 
clearly. “A gentleman never fails to meet the obli- 
gations of life.” 

Giovanni’s last wish was gratified. He died alone 
with his son. Before Helena stood in the doorway, 
his soul was gone. 


CHAPTER II 


D ante missed the old house, with its broken 
gate and avenue of dark trees. All his life 
he remembered the little patches of light on 
the driveway, where the moon shone through the 
trees. All his life he remembered how, when at 
evening he was sometimes sent to close the gate, he 
ran over the moonlight and his steps went faster and 
faster until he regained the house. He remembered 
old Spencer, the gardener, who could set a trap for 
a squirrel, and had seen the caribou come down to 
drink at the river when he was a boy. He remem- 
bered a rose bush he had carried home from the 
market, that bid fair to be covered with blossoms 
each year, and each year just at the moment of its' 
greatest promise was stricken with a strange and 
withering blight. He remembered his little room 
with the white iron bedstead and little wash stand. 
He remembered the high window sill where he sat on 
summer mornings, with his knees drawn up under his 
chin, watching the sun come up like a rosy silver ball 
behind the far church spire. Then, very lucidly 
awake, he dressed and, tiptoeing down the stairs, 
unlocked the rusty lock of the pantry door and came 
upon old Spencer with the morning. 

“Hello there,” was his greeting. And not sure 


13 


THE NEW WORLD 


14 

of his welcome, it was followed with an optimistic 
remark. think it is going to be a fine day.” 

Old Spencer was a pessimist. His mornings were 
not triumphant. Often he did not respond to Dante. 
If he did, it was sullenly. “The weather is like 
wummin. Master Dante. It’s changeable.” This 
remark never failed to take the light out of Dante’s 
sky. It confirmed his worst fears. His knowledge 
of “wummin” was limited to his mother and Beda, 
the cook. 

But when his Father died, the old house, with its 
dark, nocturnal trees, was left to emptiness. Dante 
and his mother moved into the city and went into 
lodgings. 

Hitherto Dante’s world had been conceived of the 
stars. At Mrs. Bloom’s it became clear and absolute. 
He grew self conscious, because he became aware 
that there was a universe besides his universe, a life 
apart from his own life. His brain clicked excitedly 
at the number of people under one roof. Mrs. 
Bloom’s was to him a modern Tower of Babel. He 
felt it an unbridled license that they should all be 
there. Two houses thrown into one and fully occu- 
pied. Mrs. Bloom’s was at its zenith. Dante 
enjoyed the movement, but subconsciously he ex- 
pected the wrath of God to fall. He watched his 
mother and was surprised to find her pausing after 
dinner to talk to one of the guests. It foreboded a 
relaxing of vigilance and it encouraged him. It was 
during one of these interludes that Dante first be- 
came aware of Mrs. Dreiser. 


THE NEW WORLD 


IS 

Mrs. Dreiser was a gray-eyed woman with a 
pleasant smile^ and Dante’s first impression of 
womanhood was catching her gray eyes with his own 
and seeing her smile. The first time Dante felt she 
must be looking at Mr. Beecher. Mr. Beecher, a 
fellow lodger, showed a distinct preference for Mrs. 
Dreiser. Dante looked behind him. Mr. Beecher 
was not there. He looked back at Mrs. Dreiser. 
Mrs. Dreiser’s lips parted. Again she smiled. It 
was unmistakably intended for him. Dante’s heart 
gave a little leap, but he felt awkward, and ran 
upstairs before his mother had finished her conver- 
sation. 

In the dining room Dante sat at the bottom of the 
table next to Mr. Beecher. He got down to break- 
fast usually before his mother. The morning after 
Mrs. Dreiser’s encouraging smile, he timed his 
breakfast to coincide with the breakfast of Mr. 
Beecher, and after exchanging the morning greetings 
he approached Mr. Beecher gently. 

He said, “Where is Mr. Dreiser?” surveying Mr. 
Beecher with a glance that intimated it was a ques- 
tion from one man to another. 

“Eh?” said Mr. Beecher curtly. 

Dante was determined to persist, though his voice 
came somewhere from the belt of his norfolk jacket. 

“Is Mrs. Dreiser’s husband dead?” he asked. 

Mr. Beecher sprinkled the salt vociferously over 
his entire plate. 

“Mrs. Dreiser’s husband is a dark horse,” he 
replied sternly. Mr. Beecher tucked his table napkin 


i6 


THE NEW WORLD 


under his chin, porridge had its dangers, polished his 
spoon with his table napkin as a precautionary meas- 
ure, and prepared to embark upon his breakfast. 

“It is too bad,” said Dante with the sugar spoon 
suspended over his plate. 

“What is?” Mr. Beecher regarded him from 
under his eyebrows. 

“That Mrs. Dreiser hasn’t a nice husband,” ex- 
plained Dante. 

Mr. Beecher, with the spoon half way to his lips, 
turned and looked inquiringly, but Dante’s eyes were 
large and round and full of sympathy. 

“You’re a good boy,” said Mr. Beecher with 
resumed good humor. “I like good boys, but you 
must let me get on with my breakfast.” 

Then came an interval during which Dante’s devo- 
tion was inarticulate, but altogether the possession 
of Mrs. Dreiser. He lay awake for two or three 
hours every night trying to construe the medium of 
appropriate sacrifice. Mr. Beecher’s metaphor left 
him at a disadvantage. St. George rode upon the 
dragon. He came upon the beast mounted, but Mr. 
Dreiser was the “dark horse” and Dante lay in wait 
on foot. A David at a disadvantage, but with a 
stone. Still rather tremendously if he could not 
attack the “dark horse,” he wanted to serve. 

Emboldened by Mrs. Dreiser’s constant smile and 
the encouraging grunts of Mr. Beecher, Dante began 
to feel his footing of a firmer consistency. Mrs. 
Dreiser’s smile, indisputably an insidious and be- 
witching quality, busied itself with Dante, until 


THE NEW WORLD 


17 


Dante the unsophisticated became a perpetual claim- 
ant for that smile. It could not be too definitely 
insisted upon, Dante’s instinct taught him that, but 
there were the indisputable rights of passing in the 
passage way, and in a certain youthful expectation, 
he grew to count upon the smile of entry and the 
smile of exit at the regularly recurring meals. 

Sad, sad were the evenings when Mrs. Dreiser was 
dining out. With a sickening sense of loss, Dante 
saw the chair pushed straight into the table, its back 
resting forlornly upon the cloth. With sickening 
disappointment, he saw no knife, fork, cross spoon 
or glass. This intimated absence, and there was no 
use lingering in the hall. On such an evening Dante 
went straight up to his room. 

Wonderful, incredibly wonderful it was to him, 
but the effect of the magic was that he wanted more. 

It was at this point of his psychological develop- 
ment, that absently after dinner Mrs. Dreiser 
dropped the hint. “I would like to see the ‘Merry 
Widow,’ ” she said with the shy way she had of 
inviting impossibilities. 

“Too bad,” said Mr. Beecher, shaking his head. 

“Why?” cooed Mrs. Dreiser. 

Mr. Beecher laughed nervously. “It is only that 
I have a meeting on Saturday afternoon.” 

“Of course, I never expected you to take me, but 
they say the music is so pretty.” 

Mrs. Dreiser dropped her eyes and ran her finger 
and thumb along the hem of her handkerchief. 

Dante regarded the carved yellow oak stair post 


i8 


THE NEW WORLD 


and flushed slightly. His imagination became active 
and seductive. He visioned a theater — footlights, 
a sea of darkness and he, Dante, sitting close to Mrs. 
Dreiser. And out from his imagination rode a 
winged monster with a wide mouth and a lifted smile. 
He saw it like the descending of a height inaccessible. 
Far away he saw it and then he saw it near. And 
the aroma of the monster of his imagination struck 
into his heart, and a wild certitude took possession of 
him. Often again he was to know this monster, but 
the moment of its first coming was at the foot of 
Mrs. Bloom’s stairs and took the form of a strange, 
overwhelming exultation that compelled him to 
speak. 

“Mrs. Dreiser,” said Dante with the mischief rife 
in him, “will you come to the ‘Merry Widow’ with 
me?” 

Manifestly Mrs. Dreiser and certainly Mr. 
Beecher might have laughed. 

Mrs. Dreiser turned toward him, but the teasing 
words that she might have spoken were held. 

Dante’s face was set and his eyes were shining. 

It was the following morning that one of the 
salient facts of life first hit Dante. The fact that for 
his great moments, one time or another a man must 
pay. A properly constituted individual first puts his 
nickel in the slot and takes his great moment out 
after. It is the culmination of what has led up to it, 
the cap of his climax, but there are some individuals 
who, running ahead of their slow destiny, seize their 


THE NEW WORLD 


19 

great moments, then lay about to find a means where- 
with to pay. 

The following morning the financial aspect of 
Mrs. Dreiser’s “Yes” grew large before him. The 
night before the glamour of his acceptance had over- 
shadowed the reality, but to tell the truth, the very 
depressing truth, his whole capital in the world was 
forty cents. His little tin bank would not disgorge 
one penny more than forty cents, and Dante knew he 
could not take Mrs. Dreiser to the “Merry Widow” 
with forty cents. And yet this was the first invitation 
Dante had given to a woman and in his veins was the 
pride of the Ricci’s. In a world of restricted and 
disciplined people, he was the victim of heredity, and 
was overtaken by a temptation from his parental 
ancestors. His mother he could not appeal to. 

The effect of this upon Dante was a kind of panic. 
He went with a heavy heart down the street through 
the school gate. 

Nowadays, people are very practical about chil- 
dren. Conservation and economy are two signs. 
Conservation of health, enforced hygiene that not an 
ounce of strength be lost. And economy of time, 
that not a day go without its telling mark on life. To 
the practical Helena, these ideas had laid hold. She 
had, from the beginning of her life as a mother, tried 
to put in. force discipline and hygiene, and with Gio- 
vanni’s death the need of economy of time presented 
itself, so within two months, so quickly did she act, 
Dante found himself attending school in the city, 
looking back as to a thing forgotten to the quiet days 


20 


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when his Father taught him his lessons at home. 
Unhasty lessons, generously unafraid of the lapse of 
time, they went with an old fashioned pace, un- 
speeded by competition. It was as though Haileybury 
helped to dull the wound of Giovanni’s loss and this 
particular morning, Dante had already been attend- 
ing a month and was losing a little the sense of 
strangeness that had at first made mixing with others 
so difficult for him. 

While he was waiting for roll call, he stood look- 
ing out of the window. His mind was full of uncer- 
tainty. 

“Rot, you’re not playing this afternoon,” said a 
voice in his ear. Dante turned to find Payton, the 
football fan. 

“What’s up?” said Payton, flicking his third finger 
with his thumb. “Who’s been ragging you? You 
look in a funk.” 

Dante regarded him abstractedly. 

“I am,” he said shortly. He had never an adroit 
and ready speech. 

“You need some cheek, new boy,” said Payton 
resolutely. “Here’s roll call, see you later.” 

In the gymnasium Payton came up to him again. 

“What’s the row?” asked Payton. “Aren’t you 
changing into your gym things?” 

“No,” was Dante’s monosyllabic reply. 

“Can’t bear to take off your swagger new boots,” 
teased Payton. “What’s up?” 

For a moment they eyed each other, but at this 
point Dante felt a liking for the bigger boy. 


THE NEW WORLD 


21 


“Oh, everything,” he said. A gust of misery 
whirled across his mind. 

“Birching?” asked Payton, the materialist. 

Dante shook his head. 

“Girl?” queried Payton with ill-concealed scorn. 

“Rot,” denied Dante. 

“Money?” snapped Payton. 

“Righto,” admitted Dante. 

Payton’s expression was one of a man who en- 
counters a triviality. 

“How much?” he persisted. 

“Two dollars and ten cents,” ventured Dante, 
thinking of the forty cents, and hoping to cover with- 
out a leeway. 

Payton did not reply immediately. 

“Sticker,” said Payton scratching his ear, and yet 
he stopped. “You can’t stick old Payton” was the 
faith of the fifth form. “He’d find a way out of 
Hades.” Payton knew what they said of him and 
lived up to it. 

“Look here,” he said suddenly. “Pve got it. Sell 
your boots. Bailey’s father has just sent him five 
plunks for a pair. Offer yours for four and he will 
take you. You are the same size.” Payton called 
across the gym to a pale-faced boy. “Here, Bailey.” 

“Oh no,” said Dante, still occupied with his pov- 
erty. 

“Oh, yes,” said Payton. 

Bailey’s voice cut the air. “What is it, Payton?” 

“Boots,” said Payton. “Wonderful boots. Buy 
’em, Bailey.” 


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“Try ’em, Bailey. Out with your money and pay 
for ’em, Bailey.” 

Bailey made his way across the gym, and Payton 
explained. Dante fumbled with his coat and pro- 
tested, but Payton would not be halted, he bore 
Dante down. 

“Off with your boots and on with your runners,” 
he said. 

Dante obeyed, the transaction went through. 

As they swung past the turnstile to the cricket 
field, Payton spoke in scorn. 

“Bailey’s a beast,” he said abruptly, “but Pm glad 
you got the money.” 


CHAPTER III 


W HILE he was a day boy the school never 
really got hold of Dante, but in the autumn 
term, his Mother went abroad and Dante 
became a “boarder” at Haileybury. He slept in a 
dormitory with eleven other boys in a little cubicle 
made of light sail cloth slung with rings on iron rods. 
In each cubicle was an iron bed, a chair, a small 
looking glass and a jug and basin poised upon a 
marble-top chest that held three drawers. 

In Dante’s dormitory slept Bailey and John Dow- 
den and one Wickfield, but not Payton. Payton was 
a monitor and a fifth form boy. 

Though it was quite late in life before he realized 
it, abundant love for somebody was as necessary to 
Dante as sunshine to the flowers and in his first term 
at school, Payton had him. 

“Young nipper,” said Payton, pursing up his lips. 
“A fourth form boy cannot be a fag, but he can be a 
tag. I appoint you my tag. In the English of the 
Heads, my shadow.” 

Dante smiled and fell to it. 

In the late nineties the craze for making children 
specialize had not got sway. Children got what was 
wanted in a general way. The Heads taught the old 
subjects in a faith that what had done for the Fathers 
would suffice for the sons. A good old classical- 


23 


24 


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mathematical grind mixed with the belief that the 
many little heads in the dormitories would sift the 
chaff from the wheat and in a manner of natural 
selection absorb for each individual need. 

In each sloping inkstained desk underneath the 
hinged wooden cover lay the same little assortment, 
the same little tools of mental equipment, the same 
academic colored lights for the same intensely differ- 
entiated minds. 

White-face Bailey, John Dowden, Payton and 
Dante drew from the same spring with the same cup. 

Vividly against a more intense background learn- 
ing specializes in 1921, but in 1900 the day of 
specialty was not yet. 

Confessed that in spite of the wide swing and the 
vague range of the scholastic tuition, the academic 
issue was extremely narrow. 

Much in after life is lack of originality deplored, 
much bemoaning of the sameness of peg to peg, yet 
in the urgent youth of the boy the state cranks on 
with its old machinery, and neither by discernment, 
by arresting gestures, nor by a tender nurturing of 
some different and peculiar strain does it help, nor 
exhort, nor minister, nor cultivate a rare flower in the 
garden of the boy’s mind. “Inconclusive, incon- 
clusive,” birched the masters of 1899. 

Yet who are the statesmen of 1921, but the boys 
of 1899. In 1921 the men who come to the surface 
having struck some rich ore, are the boys who went 
down the shafts a mining in ’99. 

Great days are the mining days of a boy’s mind. 


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25 


Great days were the Haileybury days of Dante 
and John Dowden and Payton. I 

“Success,” whispered Payton in the dark dormi- 
tory, sitting on the edge of Dante’s bed, “that’s my 
ticket, success.” 

“Nix on it,” hissed John Dowden from the next 
cubicle under the canvas wall. Dante drew himself 
up in bed and pricked his ears. 

“My dreams will come to life,” said John Dow- 
den in the dark. 

“And white-face Bailey,” asked Dante, leaning on' 
his elbow. “White-face Bailey with the pointed ears , 
of a fawn, what will he be?” 

“A parson,^’ said Payton with a short laugh. “A 
parson, or a beastly crook.” 

They were quiet a minute while the night watch- 
man went down the hall. 

“And you, Ricci,” whispered John Dowden, “what 
is the quid for you?” 

“Old Ricci will be with me,” answered Payton 
with a certain sharpness in his voice. “He will still 
be my Tag.” 

In his first term at school, Dante made his way 
through the throng “treading delicately like Agag.” 
He had heard of initiations and the ass that brayed 
by night. And he feared the first phase. He heard 
hints, but they led to nothing, then he suspected Pay- 
ton’s mantle over him made him immune. 

So — what passed over Dante came to Wickfield. 
Wickfield’s father was the Postmaster in some small 
country town. And with the post office he combined 


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haberdashery and oranges and woven woolens and 
little garments that women wear and crockery and 
cheese. Wind of this came to Haileybury. And for 
his father’s ambiguous profession, young Wickfield 
paid. As he stretched his toes between the sheets at 
night, he felt the stirring sliminess of a toad. As 
they bathed one summer day at Hog’s Hollow, 
Wickfield came from the water, but his trousers were 
gone and he had to walk through the town with his 
nether limbs but sparsely covered by his shirt. “The 
penitence of the future postmaster-general-store — I 
don’t think,” said Payton, pointing with contempt at 
his unwilling victim. 

They passed a girls’ school taking its afternoon 
promenade. Fourteen couples, and Wickfield abroad 
in his tender shirt, with a boy on either side to see 
he didn’t run to cover. “Girls, girls, glorious girls, 
but none of them care for Wickfield,” sang Payton. 

And poor little Wickfield thought of his mother 
and cried. 

“I wonder why I stand it,” he sobbed. 

“Why do we do it?” asked John Dowden with a 
tone that had some quiet decision in it. 

Payton groaned aloud. “The father is a bounder 
and the son must be licked into shape.” 

“I think we fellows should leave the weak alone,” 
said John Dowden. “He is afraid of you,” he said 
in an undertone to Payton. 

“I have other interests,” drawled Payton, who had 
great feeling for the temper of his public. “Pm 
through with him.” 


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27 


As the boys went on, Dante fell behind with Pay- 
ton. “What are your interests?” he asked, wishing 
to overcome Payton’s silence. 

“Come and sit on the side of the canal,” said 
Payton, willing to change the subject, “and I will tell 
you a tale.” 

It was nearly five o’clock by St. Stephen’s church 
and they had no time to linger long. 

“There are Knights that go into battle with a 
woman’s favor,” Payton began, “and they do well. 
And there are men who go into battle without a 
woman’s favor and still they do well. Once upon a 
time there was a little blacksmith and his name was 
Napoleon Bonaparte and he wanted to shoe the 
world. That, my son, is fourth form history and is 
known even by you. And you also know the Pegasus 
that was shod by the little blacksmith and how it 
kicked him over at the last, but in the book of the 
little blacksmith it is also written, that he had a sister 
who was about to marry a man of the people. And 
the little blacksmith’s friends came to him and remon- 
strated and said — ‘Why do you let her marry 
Murat? Murat has no ancestors.’ And the little 
blacksmith answered — ‘Murat, why Murat is an 
ancestor.’ I’m going to be like Murat,” said Payton. 
“I will be a law unto myself, an ancestor.” 

Dante looked at his Olympian sitting on the con- 
crete post of the canal. He stood at a loss. 

“Ancestors have children,” he said. “Do you 
mean that?” 

Payton swept him with a look. “Nipper,” he said, 


28 


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“you need leading through town in your shirt like 
the postmaster. Come on, and I will race you 
home.” 

Away down the road by the silver string of the 
canal they raced. Then leaving the rows of crowded 
houses, they took a long stretch up the center of the 
boulevard under the dark trees. 

Faint, but pursuing, Dante padded after Payton. 
He wanted to overtake him before they went through 
the school gate. “I say,” he called breathlessly. “I 
say.” 

Payton stopped and waited for him to come up, 
Payton, square and strong, admired the slight, flex- 
ible form of the younger boy. “Well,” he said. 

The afternoon was gently warm and growing dim. 
The red roofs were shining in the reflection of the 
setting sun. 

“I just wanted to say,” said Dante breathlessly, “I 
understood about Murat. I think you are splendid, 
I really do.” 

“Come in,” said Payton, waving his hands toward 
Haileybury. “That illuminated and flamboyant pile 
is making of you and me — little blacksmiths. I 
don’t think,” he added. 

“Our system of ‘eddication’ is rotten, old Ricci, 
and you and I know nothing at all, but the post- 
master-general is happy again, for I see that Wick- 
field has recovered his trousers.” 

5 ^ * * * 

Greek and Latin. Greek and Latin. Elementals. 


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29 


Greek and Latin. The prevailing forces of the school 
were not, as far as Dante was concerned, the Heads. 
The senior master, Festus, although the last word in 
the court of appeal and apt to make himself felt as 
regards his own particular prejudices; Festus, when 
a boy had taken his measure, in the way of a studied 
interest during his classes, in the way of geographic 
realization of Festus’ importance to Festus. Festus 
could be circumvented. Festus as Headmaster never 
got hold of the boys, but beyond a modifying influ- 
ence, he ceased to be a menace. 

What did Festus give his boys, exactly? Primarily 
perhaps a tactful wariness. He helped to increase 
their recognition of office. In the little panorama of 
Haileybury he stood as premier. He had been 
appointed by some shuffle of the board and he kept 
his appointment by force of habit. 

Limitation was the central substance of his being. 
And the consequence of his cardinal virtue was the 
tempering of the enthusiasms of his staff. Take 
Crathern, for example. Crathern was keen, but 
while preparing to bring into play his enthusiasms 
for the youthful mind, Festus systematically and 
persistently nipped him in the bud. It was not that 
Festus forbade innovations, on the contrary, he in- 
vited them by word. “A staff that will not invite 
valiantly any improvement,” Festus would say, “is 
lost.” But interlaced with Festus’ word he brought 
a raised eyebrow until the general emotion in 
Crathern of “missionizing” became cooled and 


30 


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Crathern, by persistent discouragement, was brought 
to doubt the worth of his own impulses. 

That upturned eyebrow stood for stereotyped 
form and all that was narrow and stultified in Hail- 
eybury’s academics. 

Walking across the quad one day, John Dowden 
called to Dante. 

“Rfc-ci,” he called in singsong. “What are you 
doing for Christmas?’* 

“Nothing,” called back Dante. 

“Come home — with me,” called John in the same 
sing song. 

“Right-O,” said Dante. 

Dante found later that going home with John 
meant going up to their country house in the moun- 
tains. 

Just before breaking up, the boys were full of 
their plans, and when the last day of term came, 
Dante was glad not to be left behind. 

“Don’t forget me,” said Dante, pressing a very 
ferocious looking knife upon Payton. 

“Forget you. Why, good Lord, we’ll be back in 
three weeks.” 

Dante was content. The loneliness that crept 
from its dark corners and leapt upon his shoulders 
would not have him, he was going home with John. 

After seven hours’ journey in a crowded railway 
carriage, he and John arrived at a wayside station. 
The stars were shining brightly with the crisp twinkle 
that they take to themselves on cold winter nights. 
A little icy wind blew down from the mountains. 


THE NEW WORLD 


31 


Dante raised his face to it in pleasure while he lis- 
tened to the hoofs upon the snow as they drove 
across the lake. 

* * * 

If the external woman was an exact mirror of the 
internal woman, Mrs. Dowden would have looked 
very much like Whistler’s portrait of his Mother. 
Whistler’s mother was Puritan and Whistler’s 
mother was a Madonna in the sense that motherhood 
was to her sacred and holy. Mrs. Dowden had not, 
when Dante first met her, reached the last phase 
when a mother lives almost wholly in the past, but 
her temperament rather than her age had made her 
early in life withdraw into the lives of her children. 
Mrs. Dowden was like the winter woods through 
which they drove, beautiful, but with no more efflor- 
escence. She appeared in the doorway as the sleigh 
drove up the drive. 

“I am sure you are hungry and cold,” she said, 
establishing between herself and Dante the feeling 
that his comfort was her thought. 

John had dropped his bag and put his arms 
around his mother. 

“Mater,” he said affectionately. 

Mrs. Dowden looked down at him for a minute, 
then resting her arm about his shoulder, turned again 
to Dante. Home was home, and John expanded. 
Dante had never seen John Dowden as he was that 
night. The old family factotum was called in to see 
“Mr. John.” “My word,” she said, “how he do 


32 


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grow.” And when her husband had put the horse in 
the stable, he knocked the snow off his boots and, cap 
in hand, came in “to see Mr. John in the light.” And 
the dog Caesar rubbed his head against the calves 
of John’s legs. 

“I believe he knew you were coming, John,” said 
his mother, laughing. “He has been running up and 
down the drive and barking all day.” 

After supper, near the fire, burning with a rich 
glow, when the chairs were drawn in a circle round 
the hearth, Mrs. Dowden made the boys tell about 
Haileybury. 

“I liked Crathern,” said John. “He’s one of the 
new Heads, but Festus is knocking the spirit out of 
him. As Payton says, ‘Festus is festering in a new 
spot.’ ” 

“That isn’t one of Payton’s best jokes,” Dante 
remarked apologetically. “Some of the things he 
says are so funny. That’s far fetched.” 

“Where has Payton gone this Christmas?” asked 
Mrs. Dowden. 

“Cousins, or something,” murmured John. 

Here in this warm room beside the fire a new 
mood seized upon Dante. There was no jarring 
note. 

The conversation rose and fell, rose and fell like 
a boat sailing on a full tide, and the peace of the 
house consisted in the perfect understanding of all its 
spirits. 

In the hall they each took candles and went up to 
bed and when Mrs. Dowden had said good night to 


THE NEW WORLD 


33 


Dante outside his door, she laid her arm along John’s 
shoulder and walked down the passage to his room. 

Dante shut the door and sat on the side of his bed. 
The tentacles that stretched out to him were the 
tentacles of family life. The mood was the result of 
the security and warmth and ease of a home. Dante 
undid his collar and threw it on the bed. At home 
John Dowden took on a new importance, but at 
school Dowden couldn’t compare with Payton. 

“Dear Payton, where was he?” 

Dante went to the window and melting the frost 
from the windowpane with his hot hand he looked 
out. 

Payton was adrift in the world like himself, but 
Payton was never fearful and Payton was never 
lonely. 

Dark trees covered the mountain side and at the 
foot of the hill lay the frozen lake. There was no 
sound, just a stillness that was more potent than any- 
thing Dante had ever heard. This was Christmas 
eve and over the tops of the mountain rode Santa 
Claus with his reindeer to the boys who were not 
skeptical, but believing. There Is but one joy In 
childhood, the joy of. absolute belief. Later In life 
comes the Christ child with very different flowers, 
but in babyhood Christmas means Santa Claus gal- 
loping with his reindeer down the night to overtake 
the dawn. And between the Christmas of Santa 
Claus and the Christmas of the Christ child lie the 
wan, cold Christmas mornings of disillusion. 

When Dante went to sleep that night, he dreamed 


34 


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he was walking through the stars with Payton play- 
ing football with the moon. 

* Sl« * * * 

It is a curious thing that when a fact is once 
brought to notice, it generally recurs and persists. 
That Easter term, over the heads of Latin irregular 
verbs, Dante was constantly aware of the reverting 
personality of John Dowden. In the first place John 
Dowden, the son of a defunct Irish idealist, devel- 
oped the pose of future “service.” 

“Shirt sleeves and an apron,” commented Payton 
from the one Morris chair in the boy’s reading 
room, “he is going to polish the silver.” 

“When I am monitor of the sixth form,” said 
John with a shake of his head, “there are some 
things that I am going to stop at Haileybury.” 

“It’s a mercy for you,” retaliated Payton, “that I 
won’t be here to break your jaw. You are a gum- 
drop. No one could stick you. Even a whale 
couldn’t swallow you whole.” 

But Dowden was not to be downed. 

“Life,” he said, getting a little flushed in the 
cheeks, “is a bird in the dark.” The metaphor 
eluded him, but he persisted. “Out from the dark. 
Back to the dark. Its only excuse is service.” 

“Omar Khayyam,” retaliated Payton, dropping 
into the argument. “Your father begot you, why do 
you need an excuse?” 

They wrangled for some time and it had the effect 
on Dante of two quickly succeeding views of life. 


THE NEW WORLD 


35 


Bright of eye and his hair a little ruffled, John 
became discursive upon what was to himself a filmy, 
philanthropic objective point. He discoursed as the 
prophets of old, hoping it would be given him in 
that same hour what he would speak. 

And from the depths of his chair, Payton regarded 
him coolly. 

‘Tt is the function of the gum drop,” he remarked, 
“to take away the appetite of man.” 

The conversation languished a little. Then Dante 
asked Payton what was-his idea of life. 

“Boys,” answered Payton, rising from his chair 
and stretching his arms above his head, “Dante, 
Wickfield, White-face Bailey, and Dowden. Little 
sparrows on the path of my ambition, I am far 
greater than you all and what I know of life, I may 
not tell you yet.” 

And at the end of the term Payton passed from 
Haileybury. 


CHAPTER IV 


P AYTON went away and in his place, because 
no person of his acquaintance seemed sufficient, 
Dante put what he called his “Curriculum.” 
Looking back across the years, Dante saw those 
months tumbling like Greek letters across a page. 
Months there were when he clung desperately to 
something. Months when he gave up and was car- 
ried by the current of the stream. But through them 
all, sometimes submerged, there ran his “Curricu- 
lum.” And the curriculum was the cardinal factor of 
his life. In his Haileybury days the “Curriculum” 
still bore out something of its meaning, but later it 
felt its way to larger issues and it stood for the seed 
that was sown on the wind by Giovanni- “Get a 
plan, Boy, and never swerve.” 

Exact studies did not grip him. He was always 
bored by the dogma of life, but here and there a 
beautiful ethic charmed him. Here and there a 
passing personality held him by its spell. 

Personalities that emerged to him taught him to 
long, to desire, but as he drew near, withdrew 
from the grasp of his too young hands. Then out 
he would come from the glamour and life would lie 
waste for a time. It was then he fell back on the 
“Curriculum,” the thread of golden purpose in his 
life. So far he had no plan. It was only that he 
36 


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37 


planned to have a plan. The “Curriculum” became 
elastic in its meaning. It stood for all he intended 
to do. Beautified by milestones. Truths discovered 
and captured like white pebbles marking an untrod- 
den road. Platitudes, some of them, but treasured 
for the plan. “Don’t criticise” was one. “Criticism 
kills love.” That was written in the round hand of 
seventeen at the end of the Gospel of St. John. 

Dante looked at it at twenty-two and laughed. At 
twenty-two he had no love of that kind. 

Youth stole away and manhood crept into its 
place. The “Curriculum” had not been unavailing. 
Little piles of thoughts lay between the white stones, 
but there was nothing to blend them with each other. 
They were not to be used as yet. Dante had no plan 
to build his house of life. 

All his life Dante suffered from the first contact 
of change in any form. He hated Haileybury in his 
first term. He hated the shining red roofs and 
longed for the tumbledown stone house where he was 
born. But the pointed roofs, glistening in the sun, 
came to mean something to him and what it repre- 
sented he grew to like; and when his last term 
arrived and he had to leave and go out to life, he had 
again that dread of change, that longing to cling to 
his present conditions. 

When Payton had gone Dante drew back within 
himself. Except for his occasional coming out to John 
Dowden, his programme for the time at his own dis- 
posal was — reading, reading, and again reading — 
and it earned for him among the younger boys the 


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epithet of “Ricci the recluse.” “Queer and quiet,” 
said the junior form. His new habit of concentra- 
tion helped him in his study and he passed brilliantly. 
This brought him more to the attention of the mas- 
ters. 

Crathern invited him up to his room for a friendly 
talk. Crathern’s old dream of helping a young mind 
to find its feet glimmered. 

“Sit down,” said Crathern, pointing to a well- 
worn chair. Dante sat down awkwardly on the edge. 
His eye rested on the branch of maple that crossed the 
window. Crathern had put him facing the light. 
“Now then,” said Crathern, “I want to have a talk 
with you — where is all this study of yours leading? 
What do you intend to be?” 

Dante was silent. He fidgeted — he ran his fingers 
up and down inside his collar. His awkwardness 
was apparent to Crathern. 

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said Dante. “I haven’t 
made my mind.” 

“I don’t want to nag at you, Ricci,” said Crathern, 
“your sonnet ‘Erebus’ showed talent. It is probably 
the best poem that has ever been written at Hailey- 
bury.” 

Dante’s lips parted and his breath came a little 
more quickly. 

“But ” Crathern held up his finger, “you are 

too much the Parnassian. Form is everything. A 
beautiful verse meaning nothing, is to you far ahead 
of a verse less beautiful, meaning something.” 
Crathern waited. 


THE NEW WORLD 


39 


“Yes, sir,” said Dante, “it is.” 

“Pitfall, Ricci,” said Crathern, “Parnassian pit- 
fall The poet is a key-board, nothing more. 

Every idea in passing lays its finger on a key; the 
key vibrates and gives its note, that is all.” 

“Yes,” said Dante, his breath still coming a little 
fast, “that is all.” 

“I knew it,” said Crathern. “You are trusting to 
your instinct at the expense of your higher brain cells. 
You must pursue the objective phenomena. You 
must pursue the objective phenomena.” 

Dante began to breathe more easily. “Yes sir,” 
he said. 

“The principles advanced by psycho-physiology,” 
continued Crathern, raising his voice in the manner 
of the school-room, “admit of two kinds of beauty — 
the sensuously beautiful and the intellectually beauti- 
ful. Now I don’t think that morality alone can be 
demanded of a work of art, but I do think,” Cra- 
thern paused, “I do think the intellectually beautiful 
rather than the sensuously beautiful should be pur- 
sued.” 

Dante looked out of the window. He saw the 
maple branch outlined, against the brick wall of the 
L. And Crathern saw that Dante’s mind had wan- 
dered. 

“Festus must be right,” he thought to himself. 
“The young mind takes what it needs. It is individ- 
ually selective.” 

Dante still looked at the budding maple branch. 
The sky above was a deep blue. As he watched him 


40 


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there was something about the sharp line near 
Dante’s mouth that touched Crathern. It bespoke 
isolation. 

“You’ve liked it here, Ricci ?” he asked. Crathern 
detected a young sapling stiffening itself against the 
winds of life. 

Dante looked back at him. “Yes, sir,” he said. 

“Try to mix more with the other boys,” said 
Crathern. “Don’t wait for others to make friends 
with you. Take the initiative. Make the first move, 
and give the thought of your future occupation some 
serious attention. It is quite time. Be less negative. 
More positive. Seek definitely the objective phe- 
nomena.” 

Crathern stood up. The interview was over. 

Again against the light Crathern caught the sharp 
line of Dante’s chin. He held out his hand. “Your 
sonnet was good,” he said. 

“Thank you, sir,” said Dante, flushing slightly. 

Crathern closed the door after Dante. “I am a 
failure as a schoolmaster,” he said to himself. “I 
want to get near that boy and I don’t know how to do 
it. I don’t know how to do it.” 

Parentage often blunders, but perhaps even a 
blundering parentage is better than no parentage. 
Dante told himself that Crathern was right. He 
passed sentence upon himself. He must try to come 
out of himself. Going from the residence to the 
main hall, he met Huntington, who had been sent for 
to see his invalid mother and who had just returned. 
Dante’s impulse was to pass him. To dive down 


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some path and elude him, but fresh from Crathern’s 
advice, he crossed and went up to Huntington, who 
was talking with a stranger. Dante stretched out his 
hand. His gesture went disregarded. He shrugged 
his shoulders and walked on. His “Good morning” 
had been hardly audible. 

“That boy wanted to speak to you,” said the 
stranger. 

“I can’t be bothered with the boys out of hours,” 
replied Huntington. Dante heard him. He felt his 
ears burning. He struggled between faith and 
denial. He had tried, but he could not out-wear his 
shyness. When he made an effort to be friendly he 
was merely awkward. 

At the end of the term he would leave Hailey- 
bury. Its red roofs flashing in the sun, its masters, 
its boys would be as though they had never been. 
They would become merely part of his history. 

There was intermingled with his shrinking from 
departure, the thought that out in the world he might 
recover Payton, and Payton mattered. Dante 
walked to the edge of the playing fields and threw 
himself down among the trees; and, as he rested 
there, slowly the stillness stole into his spirit. So he 
lay, scarcely breathing, looking up at the interlacing 
branches of the maple trees listening to the rustling 
of the wind among the leaves. And the healing that 
is of the brown earth and the green grass, and the 
deep, unfathomable sky touched him with unseen 
wings. His gust of rage against Huntington passed. 
Peace had come again to the far reaches of his soul. 


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All his loneliness, all his isolation went into his 
reverie as he lay on the grass. He thought of the 
stars, each with its own bit of surrounding darkness 
separating it from its fellows, and in his imagination 
it seemed to him that his soul was fixed, immovable, 
separated from other souls by some dark ether. This 
was life for him. Loneliness. And yet once across 
his orbit had shot a shining, vivid world. 

Payton, like a shooting star among the constella- 
tions, had crossed his orbit. That was the bright 
moment of his soul’s history — and it would come 
again. He would make it come again. His instincts 
could not be wrong. He got up, brushed the earth 
from the sleeve of his Norfolk jacket and walked 
down the playing field to join John Dowden. 

* * * * 

Looking back it is easy to arrange into a con- 
secutive history one’s doings, but at the time they 
go uncomprehended, they are alive with happenings, 
it is the “drawing in” which memory will color. A 
boy’s school days are the rehearsals of life. The 
place that he takes among his fellow students un- 
covers to a practiced eye his possibilities. The types 
he meets are examples of the personalities he will 
encounter in life. At school he has friendship. He 
has athletics, he has sport. He has mental competi- 
tion. Outside the school walls love alone remains. 
Is he dominant among his contemporary students? 
He will be dominant in the world. Is he under the 
wing of some stronger character? Later he will be 


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43 

led by another personality. There are exceptions. 
The rule generally holds. 

The idea of writing a great book first came to 
Dante at school. It was because he wanted so tre- 
mendously to distinguish himself in some way. But 
in the passing from one phase to another, there is a 
change of organic matter, a change of thought and 
spirit. Life rambles on, long forgotten aspirations 
lie dormant, overgrown by more pressing ideas until 
there is an ebbing back to first principles and some 
trait friends had never dreamt of may reappear 
later after the greater part of two score years. Those 
who have been with a boy at school may not know 
what seeds have taken root. At least they know 
what seeds were sown. 


CHAPTER V 


D ante was seventeen years of age when he 
left Haileybury and Canada to join his 
mother in Europe. It was then that he first 
saw the sea. 

From the deck of the steamer he watched the 
silvery waves break upon each other. His nerves 
quivered with excitement. The sea had the effect 
upon him that music had upon others. In its gray 
mirror, he saw unknown countries and strange faces. 
Its current was the current of the future and he 
pictured it bearing him on the fullness of its tide. 
Yet the future remained to him a blind thing, a dark 
force against which Haileybury had given him no 
efficient knowledge. What would happen to his 
career? The first phase had passed away. The 
natural timidity of his character caused him to regret 
it. The non-formative essence of his first phase had 
not definitely led him to a second. Life was still 
glowingly unreal. 

Of his beliefs — in the profound stillness of his 
soul there remained some of the dogma scattered in 
early youth. In this omnivorous reading, he had 
read the lives of the saints and from them he had 
carried away the thought of endurance and discipline, 
but he wanted life to be happy and as though by so 


44 


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45 


doing he could change this somber world into some- 
thing brighter, he renounced the reading of religious 
books and his interest in them was replaced by an 
interest in the arts — so his mind became wrapped in 
artistic fancies. Yet as he watched the waves and 
saw the gulls circling around the ship, his faith in 
Protestantism was still alive, but he hid it lest it 
should demand from him too great a price. 

His life at Oxford was comparatively unevent- 
ful. He was noted chiefly for a mastery of 
Greek verse considerably beyond his years. There 
the influence which is Oxford’s penetrated to him. 
The quiet, stable influence that comes from perfect 
architecture, which long years have enhanced with 
dignity. The Towers against the English “Protes- 
tant” sky plowed deep furrows in his memory. He 
admired art as represented in the chapels. He was 
moved by the music of the church. Yet he steeled 
himself against too great a faith. 

It was in 1907 — the first of the seven fatal years 
that were to culminate in the great war, that Dante 
was at Oxford. The moment of over-exertion was 
beginning. 

In Germany men were writing “What is to come 
next?” 

Humanity, like a torrent of lava, was rushing 
headlong to its certain doom. Great masses of the | 
people were disciplined to secure from the vital 
powers of the individual greater efficiency. And the 
collective organism, finding no escape, had begun to 
be consumed. Fatigue, which, according to scientists, 


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changes healthy men into hysterical subjects, had 
commenced to take its toll. 

At Bremen a boy of twelve shot himself because 
he failed to pass his school examination. 

Steam and electricity had turned the customs of 
life upside down. The transition from the state 
which we call normal and that which we designate as 
hysteria had begun. Life was a hundred percent 
more exhausting. The wear and tear upon man’s 
brain generated the malady which is so clearly the 
malady of those years. Crime, madness, and suicide 
were on the increase. 

“What is to come next?” wrote a German scientist. 
While Germany, more than any other nation, fed 
the disease, which was ultimately to bring her people 
to corruption and dishonor and a starless grave. 

In his undergraduate days, Dante joined a Fabian 
society. He thrilled to the thought of a common 
division of the unearned increment. The picture of 
the splendid working man being amply rewarded by 
an automatic division of capital was held out to him 
by Albert Paul. 

“Join us,” said Albert Paul, an enterprising and 
important Fabian. “The Socialist State is the State 
of the future. Join us.” 

They talked. That was the chief part of the 
Fabians. They talked. The freedom, the modern- 
ity, the progress, and the truth were talk. England 
gave her young a long tether and freed from censure, 
her young machinery let off its steam. 

Not so in the Darmstadt Gymnasium of young 


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Germany. Already the school-boy was under pres- 
sure. Parallel with the pressure on national life was 
the pressure on individual life. The school-boy must 
train himself for the rending of tradition. It is no 
easy task. 

The nerves and the brain cannot keep pace with 
their great expenses. National life has become an 
immense forcing-house from which issue, not whole- 
some, human men, but mental grotesques from whom 
every normal, mellow impulse has been struck before 
it attains to manhood. Already in 1907 Germany 
was embarked upon human bankruptcy. 

It was Albert Paul who first brought to Dante’s 
mind the thought of that great multitude of the 
people whose life is controlled by the anxiety of ways 
and means. By a certain mental adroitness Albert 
Paul kept the eye of his world off his own shabbiness. 
But constantly in his conversation were the people 
who toil continuously, the people who are ill-clothed 
and ill-fed — whose outlook is dingy and restricted. 

It had already been discussed among the under- 
grads, this tendency of Albert Paul, but it was 
ultimately explained by Mac Alistair. Dining at 
the Carlton after the- summer term, MacAlistair 
had been waited upon by a very familiar figure, 
Albert Paul. They each behaved as they were ex- 
pected to behave — neither recognizing the other, but 
the following term it transpired that Albert Paul was 
putting himself through college with the aid of the 
art of waiting between terms. 

‘‘That’s why he is so keen on the unearned incre- 


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48 

ment/’ said MacAlistair. “TJiat is the gist of social- 
ism. Someone wants something that now he hasn’t 
got.” 

The undergrads were full of personal gossip about 
Albert Paul. 

And he was full of invective against all landlords 
and capitalists. He became aggressive and dragged 
in Dante, but he could never give a complete repre- 
sentation of the quality and possibility of the 
Fabians. When speech flagged the dream died. 
Dante looked about him as he developed doubts. 
Albert Paul had a following, but it did not include 
the best minds of his year. They grew noisy about 
the “wrongs” of the race, but they had no original 
remedy to right those “wrongs.” 

“They want something that isn’t theirs,” said 
MacAlistair. 

Albert Paul set himself to draw out Dante. “I 
admit some Fabians are Philistines,” he began in a 
self-sufficient, socialistic voice, “but tell me — ^what do 
you think of them?” He stopped. 

Dante twisted his face to a scornful expression. 
“They are a dirty lot,” he said. “They don’t wash.” 

Sj: * * sfs * 

Just before the end of his first year, Dante’s 
mother died. The estrangement of their early life 
was never quite wiped out. He was always smitten 
with great shyness during the holidays he passed with 
her, but term by term, little by little, the hostility 
that as a baby Helena roused in him, dispersed. 


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49 


The last Christmas that he spent with her was in 
lodgings in North Street. On days when she felt 
better, she dressed herself and sat on the walnut 
chair near the fire and on her bad days Helena lay 
back on the hard pillows of her lodging house bed. 
She suffered much and when in great pain, she was 
slightly more irritable, her thin lips were more 
tightly pressed together, her hands twitched con- 
stantly. 

Dante had been busy with life at Oxford. He 
was happy there. His surroundings were congenial. 
And that last Christmas, he showed a gauche willing- 
ness to do little services for his mother. She had 
always been so self-sufficient that now her weakness 
made her more human. 

There they were, those two — cooped up in three 
rooms in London. Tied together by ties of blood, 
far as the Poles apart in temperament. It was gen- 
erally when Dante had been particularly patient that 
his mother opened fire with criticism. 

At the end of a particularly trying day, Dante sat 
on the footstool by the fire. Helena had eaten noth- 
ing and had been in great pain. She had never been 
a pretty woman. With the passing of her first clear 
fairness, she was not a woman to whom one would 
desire to make any expression of affection, but her 
suffering, her being among strangers and the peculiar 
sentiment of that season of the year, all combined to 
make Dante almost loving with her. His eyes 
traveled over her twitching hands (clasping and un- 
clasping themselves in her lap) to her face. 


50 THE NEW WORLD 

“Is there anything you would like, Mater?” he 
asked. 

As his mother answered him, her eyes grew sharp. 
“I have schooled myself not to give way to fancies. 
And you, Dante, if you don’t get the better of your 
nature, will be just like your father. You are like 
him. Lazy, selfish, optimistic without due cause. 
Always a fortune round the corner. Always a 
hundred pounds that next week would be two thou- 
sand. You are your father’s son. If you don’t 
discipline yourself, you will come to nothing. It will 
be another woman’s turn then to weigh the groceries 
and patch the linen.” 

Dante turned towards the fire as Helena went on. 

He wished she would not repeat herself; he 
wished that she would not always use the same level 
voice. Once he interrupted her. He did his boyish 
utmost to get her away from the subject, but as 
Helena continued telling of his father’s shortcomings, 
of her early struggles, he began to see for the first 
time an inkling of her point of view. And he won- 
dered if she had known the silent antagonism he and 
his father had felt to her, and a sudden pang of 
accusing shame made him turn away his head. 

Suddenly she clutched his hand that was resting on 
the arm of her chair. “I have been hard on others,” 
she said, and her voice rose to a shriller note, “but I 
have never spared myself.” 

Dante did not go to bed that night for a long time. 
He leaned on the window, looking out on the damp 
night, listening to the chimes of Westminster. 


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And back in Oxford when word came that his 
mother had died suddenly, as he tried to mourn her, 
his thoughts would drift to the memory of his father. 
They two had been one. That was the gap in his 
life. This was solitude, not desolation. He tried to 
be sad. He crossed Magdalen Bridge and walked 
along the Iffley Road. Bereavement had relieved him 
of all obligation. No, there was still his father. He 
remembered the coldness that had struck upon his 
mouth as he kissed his father when he lay dead. He 
remembered the waxen beauty of his father’s face. 

High up in the sky he watched a bird following its 
own song. He turned and saw the highroad sweep 
back to the Tower outlined against a gray sky. “It 
is neither his father, nor his mother, but his own 
dream that a man follows,” he said as he walked 
slowly back to his rooms. 


CHAPTER VI 


I N the valley of the Avon, not very far from 
Tewkesbury, is Foto. And Foto is one of those 
myriad houses in England that has come from 
father to son, from father to son, since the latter 
days of the eleventh century. Looking at it from the 
village and before your eyes have grown accustomed 
to the stretch of green outlined by the Cotswold 
Hills, you might think it was quite an ordinary house. 
It is large, but it is not a castle, but when you have 
inhabited Foto you suddenly realize it is not ordi- 
nary, because so many things about it have so many 
different meanings. Think, if you can — of all the 
events that may happen to a family that has served 
the State for eight or nine centuries and you have an 
idea of the charter in the oak room, of its making of 
records including that of a “clerking knight” in the 
time of Latimer, who “did find the King a harness 
with himself and his horse while he came to the 
place that he should receive the King’s wages.” By 
a mere coincidence “Lord Pym” and Hampden had 
stayed there on their tour through England on the 
eve of elections. A tree over by the wall-garden had 
been planted in commemoration of the new philan- 
thropy. Foto had very many reminiscences. 

In the great hall, Lady Hopetoune sat before the 
tea table. She was a small, slight, old woman, with a 
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S3 


thin, wrinkled face, bright, gray eyes and a very aris- 
tocratic nose. A portrait of her hung in the picture 
gallery. The artist had drawn her standing, a small, 
alert figure with a very straight back. The pose was 
characteristic of her attitude to life. A footman 
entered, bringing in a tray, followed by an old butler 
with a spirit lamp. Lady Hopetoune looked up. 
“Has the motor gone to the station, Sampson?” 

“It went some time ago, my lady. It ought to be 
returning almost immediately.” 

The old man lighted the spirit lamp under the 
silver kettle. 

“You are expecting his young lordship?” he said. 

“Yes, Sampson. He wired. He brings two 
friends with him from Oxford.” Lady Hopetoune’s 
expression was compounded of dignity and kindli- 
ness. “They will have the two rooms in the west 
wing.” 

A look of interest came into Sampson’s face. He 
moved the place of the silver tea kettle the fraction 
of an inch. 

“His young Lordship has many new friends since he 
went to Oxford. They will no doubt be associated 
with his young Lordship’s career.” 

“Of course, Sampson.” 

A look in Lady Hopetoune’s eyes told him that 
there was to be no more information forthcoming. 

“The west rooms will be got ready. I will tell 
Madame Paguini, my lady,” he said and went out. 

The sun was setting. A warm glow came through 
the latticed windows and fell upon the little erect 


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figure at the tea table. Lady Hopetoune was follow- 
ing the thought put in her mind by Sampson. The 
thought of her grandson’s career. His father had 
never taken his “inheriting” seriously. The season 
in town. Grouse shooting in Scotland. Race meet- 
ings. These were the landmarks of his years. But 

Fitzmaurice — Fitzmaurice Lady Hopetoune’s 

eyes twinkled. He and she were of the same strain. 
They were a proud and reserved stock: courteous to 
all, but friends with few. The family passions lived 
on in them, but tempered, greatly tempered, mel- 
lowed, one might say, like the carpets on the floors, 
like the stone of the house itself. “Fitzmaurice.” A 
bright spot of color came into Lady Hopetoune’s 
cheeks and she smiled. 

A broken twig of box fell into her lap, followed by 
the sound of low laughter. She looked up and dis- 
covered on the balcony that ran along the south side 
of the hall, a tall young woman outlined against the 
oak paneling. 

“A penny for your thoughts. Granny,” she said, 
resting her two hands on the railing and leaning 
over. 

“Guess, dear.” 

“The obligations of the Peerage.” 

Lady Hopetoune shook her head. 

Her granddaughter smiled down on her. 
“Ah-ha,” she said with a low laugh, “you are 
undoubtedly thinking of Fitzmaurice.” Her voice 
had such a full, rich timbre that even a trivial remark 
acquired a new significance. Indeed, very few 


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women could compete with Margherita Borghese, 
Lady Hopetoune’s Italian granddaughter. Long 
lashes veiled her soft dark eyes. Her skin was of 
that olive clearness which is seen in Latin countries, 
and her dark hair grew low on her forehead and 
waved luxuriantly. She had a firm mouth and pow- 
erful chin which gave an expression of proud tenacity 
and latent impulsiveness. It was the type of face 
that would inspire strong emotion whether of dislike 
or affection, people were seldom merely indifferent. 

“Come down, Margherita,” said Lady Hope- 
toune, “our guests are arriving.” 

Lady Hopetoune’s dinner table that evening was 
surrounded by quite a cosmopolitan gathering. Lady 
Hopetoune and her grandson. Lord Fitzmaurice, 
occupied the two ends of the table, which glittered 
with silver and crystal and had for center decoration 
one of Solon’s vases in pate-sur-pate. Count Saki, an 
Oriental with a broad, flat face, put up his eye-glass 
to admire it. 

“Solon made that for me,” said Lady Hopetoune. 
“It represents the ‘Flight of the Hours.’ ” 

“There were two of them,” said Lord Fitz- 
maurice. “A slight variation of the same model. 
Tiffany bought one. I heard that he sold it to a pork 
butcher in Chicago.” 

“I consider Solon England’s greatest artist in the 
ceramic art,” interposed the Abbe Morot. “I saw 
two vases of his at Minton’s. They also were made 
for Tiffany and sold, I believe, for a thousand 
pounds apiece.” 


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56 

A member for one of the Hackneys delivered 
himself of a platitude which was also a quotation. 

“There can be no relation,’’ he said with a slight 
touch of contempt, “between a sum of money and a 
work of art.” 

A thin woman with green eyes played with the 
stem of her wine glass. She was sitting at Fitz- 
maurice’s left. She looked up just then and caught 
his eye. 

“The centuries have put us at a disadvantage. It 
is so difficult, when everything has been done already, 
to be original.” 

“You are still very young, Nina,” was Fitz- 
maurice’s reply. “Only the very young try so des- 
perately to be original. In middle age one becomes 
classical and restrained.” 

“Quite true, quite true. I had forgotten I was 
addressing an Oxford blue in the last term of his 
fourth year. Methuselah, Maury dear, was a teeth-er 
compared to you, you ancient Mariner.” 

With a sudden movement Madame Borghese 
turned to the young man at her right. He had hardly 
spoken. She thought he seemed shy and she wished 
to put him at his ease. 

“There is so much discussion about modern art,” 
she said in her soft, low voice, “but sometimes one 
prefers the old things ; the old painters, the well-tried 
poets.” 

The general conversation grew more lively. 
Madame Borghese turned to her left and found the 
member for one of the Hackneys embarked upon a 


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57 

political discussion with the Countess Ite. Again she 
turned to her right. 

“Have you ever been in Italy, Mr. Ricci?” she 
asked. “You have an Italian name.” 

“No,” he answered; “my father was born in Italy, 
but he spent his grown-up life in England and Can- 
ada.” 

“What part of Italy?” asked Madame Borghese. 

“Ravenna,” said Dante. “He used to describe 
market day to me when I was a boy; the tiny carts, 
the stalls covered with cloths of bright color, the 
earthenware, the beaten copper, the women with 
bright handkerchiefs over their heads.” Dante 
stopped short — “I feel as if I knew It,” he said with 
a shy laugh. 

“I know Ravenna,” said Madame Borghese. 
“Ravenna is full of Dante.” Noticing a queer ex- 
pression in his eyes, she said. “By the way, isn’t 
your Christian name Dante?” 

“Yes, my father loved Ravenna, that is why he 
called me Dante. He used to tell me about Dante’s 
Walk under the trees by the canal. Marshes He on 
each side of the narrow path by the canal and the 
canal turns aside Into many creeks and channels. 
They say the mosaics of Ravenna are the colors of 
the sky.” 

Madame Borghese smiled. “You have never been 
there?” 

“No, but I feel It. It is stem and ascetic like a 
crucifix.” 

“How well you remember.” 


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58 

“My father told me. I loved my father.” Sud- 
denly Dante remembered it was the first time in his 
life he had ever spoken of his father to a perfect 
stranger. He stammered a few words and relapsed 
into silence. 

Listening to Madame Borghese talking to some- 
one across the table, Dante perceived the wonderful 
musical quality of her voice. He turned after a few 
moments and looked at her. He saw her dark, 
slumberous eyes. Some influence flowed from her, 
passing around his body like a warm current of air. 

“I am glad you have come to Foto,” she said, 
looking him full in the face. “After dinner you must 
let me show you the view from the end of the Box 
Walk. I think it is one of the finest in all England.” 

5|t j|s ^ sK 

By the great rose bushes Dante waited for 
Madame Borghese. He sat in the shadow a little 
away from the terrace where the ladies had been 
taking their coffee. He watched a glow worm on the 
bushes. It was a night of moonlight and cool 
fragrance and it seemed to Dante as if nothing had 
ever happened, or could happen afterwards that 
would surpass its clear, lyrical beauty. And then, 
wrapped in a dark satin cloak, her light evening 
dress and neck gleaming between its opening folds, 
Madame Borghese came towards him out of the 
house. 

There was a caressing, tender expression in her 
lovely face. She did not talk much. She was one of 


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59 


those rare women with whom it is pleasant to talk, or 
be silent. Dante was excited. He did not under- 
stand his own mood. Loving, or making love had 
so far not been in his category. In the tumult of his 
conflicting emotion, he forgot to be articulate. 

“It is growing too dark to see the view,” she 
observed. 

“It is rather jolly, being here, anyway,” Dante 
responded. At the end of the box walk, they paused. 
The lights of the village were to be seen below them. 
The light of the rising moon fell on Margherita’s 
face. Dante gazed at her in a kind of rapture. Her 
cloak slipped from her shoulders and in helping her 
to put it on, he touched her shoulder with the tips of 
his fingers. A thrill ran through him. Margherita 
turned her head a little. Dante drew back. “I am 
sorry,” he said. “I am awkward.” 

“I think we will go back,” she said presently. 
“You must see the view in the daytime. We have 
left it too late.” 

A wave of emotion flooded Dante’s heart. 

On the way back to the house she talked to him a 
little, with the restrained and practiced charm of a 
woman who is young and beautiful and powerful and 
secure. There was no immediate sense of certainty 
that she understood his feelings. As they neared the 
house, she paused and pointed down to a statue of 
Aphrodite. It was as though she reverted to the 
moment when they had stood looking down on the 
village from the end of the box walk. 

“Are you younger than Fitzmaurice?” she asked. 


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“Fitzmaurice is younger than L” 

“I am twenty-two.” 

“Ah, I am twenty-five.” 

As they walked on, a strange gladness filled 
Dante’s heart. He had no reason for it, but he just 
felt wildly, outrageously glad. 

A faint odor of jasmine came to them through the 
darkness. 

Margherita turned away and stood as if uncon- 
scious of his presence. And Dante waited beside her 
full of the ghostly rapture of the night, waiting to 
understand and follow her mood. 

The light from the drawing room windows fell 
upon the terrace. In it they saw the Abbe Morot 
coming towards them. 

“Madame Borghese,” he called in his well modu- 
lated ecclesiastical voice. “Count Saki is looking for 
you. You are wanted to make a fourth at bridge. 
You are wanted for bridge,” he repeated as he came 
up to them. “I volunteered to help in your discovery, 
although I think bridge is only a negative pleasure 
on such a night when it is a pity to remain indoors.” 

“You mean?” questioned Margherita. 

“That beauty is ephemeral. One cannot have 
enough of beauty.” 

“Until one has had too much. Father,” she said 
with a little laugh. He turned and walked with them 
towards the house. 

“It is not always with impunity that a woman 
plays cards.” 


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6i 


Margherita held up her finger. “Father, Father. 
It was only yesterday Granny had such hopes of you. 
I heard her tell you, you were becoming tolerant and 
that through tolerance you would have a larger 
influence over a greater number of people.” 

“My tolerance is for men, not for women. Their 
natures differ.” 

“You would have us nuns?” 

“Perhaps. The boundaries of a woman’s life 
must be defined.” 

At the foot of the stone steps, they paused. Mar- 
gherita patted his arm. “You have no faith in us,” 
she began. 

Father Morot interrupted her. A deeper note 
came into his voice. “By nature, women are 
novices,” he said. “I would have them remain so.” 

Dante had not spoken. He had been listening to 
the timbre of her voice, rather than the meaning of 
her words. He was conscious of that feeling of 
intense joy. He heard her say, “Are you coming in, 
Mr. Ricci?” 

He had a sensation of confused beauty. The light 
from the hall door fell upon her dress that shone as 
a blue jay’s wing shines in the sunlight. 

“Are you coming?” she asked, looking around. 

Then as if he had just made up his mind. “No, 
I am going to have a cigar with Fitzmaurice. I see 
him over there on the terrace.” 

Margherita went up the steps, followed by the 
Abbe Morot, and as she passed into the house, it 


62 


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seemed as though the spell were broken and that the 
night lifted a little above the tree tops. As Dante 
turned from the steps the scent of the jasmine pressed 
upon his face and pierced through to his heart. 


/ 


CHAPTER VII 


D ante stood at the door of the morning room 
watching Madame Borghese. She was sit- 
ting at the writing table. She had an open 
letter in her hand and was trying to answer it. Above 
her was a landscape by Monet. A low horizon, a 
haze, and a distant spire. 

He had come from the gun room where the men 
were smoking and talking about hunting. On his 
way he had seen three of the ladies at three different 
writing tables each busily engaged in writing. And 
he thought to himself how English this habit was 
and how ever after, he would recognize an English 
woman by her haste to her writing table after break- 
fast. 

As he stood in the doorway he heard a voice from 
the drawing room. 

“Why didn’t you meet me in the garden last 
night?” Saki said, coming into the morning room. 

Margherita’s face took on something of the vexed 
look of a child who struggles with a difficult task. 

“You must not take me seriously, Saki,” she said 
in a low tone. “It is one of the traits of my nature 
that I can’t be tied down. It isn’t that I dislike it. 
It is simply that I am incapable of it.’’ 

Saki thought a moment. 

“One never knows where one is with an English 
63 


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woman,” he said. He rested his hand on the back 
of Margherita’s chair and leaned over her. Dante 
did not know what he dreaded. Swiftly the room 
seemed to darken before his eyes. He felt at all 
costs he must stop the conversation. At least he 
must let them know that he was there. Before he 
realized what he was doing, he had entered the room 
and was stammering that he had heard. As soon as 
he had said it, he would have given his right hand to 
have it unsaid, to have tip-toed away unseen. 

Margherita was silent for a moment, then she half 
turned towards him with a friendly, half ironical 
smile. 

“Why not,” she said, laughing a little. “To over- 
hear what Saki says to me is quite — allowed.” 

An older man would have turned the tables on her, 
joked her, perhaps Dante’s feeling was one of 
anger and resentment. Her attitude towards him 
was the attitude of a woman to a boy and since last 
night he had felt himself rising to a new stature. He 
felt as the trees of the forest must feel when the 
early sap begins to rise and far away there is the 
first soft, insistent call of spring. 

With her lofty ignoring of his manhood, he felt it 
leap to being and sweep away his adolescence. He 
wanted to revenge himself on something. He wanted 
to make her realize he was a man. He looked at 
Saki, his square, compact body, his flat, oriental 
face, and instantly Dante’s brain flashed a memory. 
He saw again the old stone house where he was 
born; the living room, the hearth, and on it in the 


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65 


light of the flames lay the upturned, grinning mask 
of the broken Buddha, mocking him in the firelight. 

As he remembered the Buddha, a feeling of utter 
loathing came over him for this man. 

How could Madame Borghese accept him as a 
friend. And the disgust Saki made him feel lessened 
Saki’s challenge. He would go back to the gun room, 
leave them to their conversation. Upon one thing, 
though, he would insist, Margherita must realize 
that he was a man. The strength of the suddeii 
smart within him made him wish to dart away. He 
murmured something about Fitzmaurice. 

The room swam before him and he bolted down 
the hall, choking with jealous and revengeful thought 
of Saki, who made a jocular remark about him to 
Margherita as he left. Dante heard her low laugh. 
He was full of impotent rage. No, he wasn’t impo- 
tent. Damn the man. He would down him. A 
vague idea of their conversation recurred, not so 
much Saki’s words, but Saki’s tone of intimacy. Then 
a new thought came to him. Madame Borghese had 
allowed it. Here was something outside himself and 
he was impotent. He was impotent. 

In the gun room Dante found MacAlistair and 
Fitzmaurice. He felt a great liking for Fitzmaurice. 
Fitzmaurice had the unalterable poise of a man who 
possesses a perfectly balanced, intelligent mind. 

Fitzmaurice stared at him. Dante had grown 
very pale. 

As he lighted a cigarette his hand trembled. He 
gave the impression of something wounded and 


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young and struggling. He spoke. His voice shook. 
He tried to control it. 

“I can’t bear the Oriental,” he said at last, his 
voice quivering. 

“Oh, Saki,” said Fitzmaurice. He could not 
refrain from smiling. He liked Dante and was 
amused at his apparent admiration of Margherita. 
“I don’t think he is as bad as he looks.” 

MacAlistair laughed. 

“He couldn’t be. Why don’t you like him? Has 
he been treading on your poetic toe?” 

“No,” said Dante, recovering his composure, “but 
there can be no compact between the East and the 
West if Saki is representative, because Saki is a 
swine. What are you chaps doing?” he asked. 

“Discussing the Bourneville Village Trust,” said 
MacAlistair with a tremor of excitement in his voice. 
“John Burns has advised Cadbury and Cadbury has 
given to the Trust three hundred and thirty acres on 
which nearly four hundred cottages are already built. 
The lowest rental is six shillings a week, for which 
the tenant gets three bedrooms, a kitchen, a parlor, 
a third room downstairs and a bath. The village is 
laid out attractively. There is a large recreation 
ground, swimming pool, boys’ club, and well-venti- 
lated rooms.” 

Fitzmaurice, with his hands in his pockets, walked 
up and down the room. 

“The strength of England lies in her laborers,” he 
interposed. “The Cadbury works are only one of 
the first, other large corporations will follow. The 


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67 

English are slow to adopt improvements, but when 

success has been demonstrated ” Fitzmaurice 

broke off. ‘‘Anyway, the better Englishman realizes 
his obligations to his brother who is less happily 
situated.” 

“Labor conditions improve,” MacAlistair told 
them. “Not so long ago, women in England worked 
on all fours in the mines and seldom left the mines 
except to give birth to a child, or to die and end 
their dreary lives. Things have improved. Still we 
want more organization.” 

“Or conciliation,” hazarded Fitzmaurice, detecting 
the unsufficing of the argument. 

“Albert Paul believes in strikes,” said Dante, 
whose mind was still belligerent with thoughts of 
Saki. “He thinks a nation without strikes is like 
China. There is no organized labor movement 
there.” 

They heard Sampson’s voice in the hall saying: 
“His young Lordship is in the gun room with the 
two young gentlemen from Oxford.” 

Lady Hopetoune entered. Her old eyes sparkled 
as they fell on Fitzmaurice. He was such a tall, 
clean specimen of young manhood. And she — life 
had swept over her as the winds and rain swept over 
the statue of Aphrodite in her garden, leaving its 
marble contour cold and motionless and apparently 
unchanged. She had lived in the midst of political 
enthusiasm through many changes of government, 
yet still as when in town, she descended the steps of 
her house in Grosvenor Square, her small head held 


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slightly in the air and the black spangles of her bon- 
net sparkling in the sun, still as in her old fashioned 
way with a hand on each side, she gathered up her 
skirts, and entered her carriage; she took with her 
an air of something elevated and permanently secure, 
which the little winds of life had passed untouched. 
It was only as she looked at her grandson, Fitz- 
maurice, that a glint of humanity dimmed her old 
eagle eyes. 

“I have been on your mind. Granny, haven’t I?” 
Fitzmaurice said gently. 

Lady Hopetoune laid her blanched hand on the 
rough tweed of his shooting jacket. “People expect 
to be entertained, dear.” 

She nodded to Dante and MacAlistair — “I must 
pack him off,” she said, “I really must.” 

Fitzmaurice threw back his young shoulders and 
drew in the warm spring air. 

“How about lunching at the Abbey? It will be 
interesting for those who haven’t seen it. As you 
don’t ride, Ricci, Margherita will take you in the 
dog cart.” 

Lady Hopetoune interrupted — “You’ve forgotten 
the member for North Hackney.” 

“I’ll look after him. Granny,” Fitzmaurice said 
slowly, after a pause. 

But Dante did not drive with Margherita. Lady 
Hopetoune arranged that Margherita should drive 
the member for North Hackney as she had planned. 
In the shadow of the old Abbey, waited upon by 
Sampson and his underling, the Italian footman, in 


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69 

what had been an old quadrangle, surrounded by a 
cloistered walk, they had luncheon. Up to them 
came the intoxicating power of the spring charged 
with the pungent charm of the valleys flushing into 
green. 

Dante’s eye was caught by Margherita’s hand and 
its tiny wrist as it lay on the stone table beside him. 
It seemed to him a miracle of grace and form and he 
watched it, as though it were a butterfly and would 
presently fly away. He heard Saki ask her if she 
were coming to Paris for the May races. Dante 
watched her hand, the fingers stretched themselves 
slightly, as a butterfly raises its wings, then as they 
dropped back upon the stone, he heard her answer in 
the negative. 

Immediately exultation took the place of the revul- 
sion he had felt all morning. He made no effort to 
join in the conversation, he did not care what they 
thought of him. He gave himself up utterably to 
her charm. The Countess Ite called something 
across the table and he heard Margherita’s low 
laugh. He felt if only her hand would move to- 
wards him, would touch him. Instead he saw the 
muscles stiffen as she pushed away her chair and rose 
from the table. Luncheon was over. 

He walked beside her. “Fitzmaurice and Nina 
have gone to look at the monastery gate. Shall we 
go?” she asked. 

He listened. Below them lay the valley. “Imag- 
ine,” she was saying, “years and years ago, when the 
monks lived here. Not a house in sight. A brother 


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is walking in the garden telling his rosary, he hears a 
horse on the highway. The brother listens. There 
is a knock at the gate. The dogs bark. The brother 
looks to make sure the porter is there. He raises his 
eyes to heaven and crosses himself. It is news from 
the world.” Coming up to Fitzmaurice, Margherita 
asked him if he had heard her resurrection of the 
spirit of the past. 

Fitzmaurice raised his eyebrows. He was always 
very gentle with his cousin, Margherita. She at- 
tracted him. Her manner, that seemed to bend 
down to meet any effort on the part of the person 
with whom she was conversing was quite alluring to 
Fitzmaurice’s ascetic nature. It and her deep, dark 
eyes, were the only signs of unbending in an otherwise 
very cold reserved family connection. “I am always 
afraid Morot will get you, you are half Romanist,” 
he responded. 

“No fear, Maury, I love the world.” 

“We are alike in that,” said the Countess Ite. 
“We are gregarious. We want people, people, 
people,” she turned and said something to Fitz- 
maurice. 

“People,” repeated Margherita softly. “Magic, 
magic people.” 

Dante looked at her. How I should like to know 
her story, he thought. She seemed in gay spirits. 
Intoxicated with the beauty of the spring day, her 
happiness came out in spite of herself. She had 
climbed upon a pile of stones to look at the view. 


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71 


In descending she hesitated a moment, her hand in 
his. Dante had a way of looking beyond what he 
saw, but that moment he did not look beyond. He 
saw very plainly her gray tweed suit, a soft gray hat, 
small, with a rim of little white wings. He stared up 
at her dark eyes under the brim of white wings, sur- 
prised a little that she did not withdraw her gaze 
from his admiring glance. Her eyes lighted up and 
a smile parted her rosy lips. She dropped his hand 
and sprang to the ground placing a few paces be- 
tween them. 

In Dante’s eyes was the expression of a child who 
still supports himself by some tried object, but is 
about to take his first steps alone. Behind them Nina 
laughed, the laugh of a woman who is with a man 
who pleases her. 

“Shall I drive you back in the dog cart, Mr. 
Ricci?” asked Margherita. 

“Oh, yes,” he said, “please do.” 

Driving along the English country lanes, the chest- 
nut mare speeding over the gray road, talking about 
the merest trifles, or sitting silent beside Margherita, 
Dante wondered what had come to him. Her voice 
thrilled him like the stinging whip lightly wielded 
thrilled the mare. Her personality touched shy, un- 
revealed, deep hidden thoughts. Her hand caught 
the threads of his life as it caught the reins that were 
drawn up from the back of the chestnut mare. He 
heard the trot-trot of the horse’s hoofs. He heard 
the wheels rolling over the hard road as Margherita 


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chattered on. And as she flicked the ears of the 
mare and she danced along, Dante felt that the 
whip of life had fallen upon him too. 

From this strange impetus he knew not what road 
he would follow, he knew not to what road It would 
lead him, whether to happiness or disaster. 

“What a wonderful day It has been!” she re- 
marked as they drove past the lodge gates. 

Dante looked again at her eyes and her smile. It 
was as though his being, which had been composed 
of a million atoms, was fused Into one solid whole. 


CHAPTER VIII 


N TGHT came wonderfully at Foto. With 
tentative, dark fingers it found its way past 
the trunks of the trees over the nodding rose 
bushes, until last of all it touched the gabled house. 

At dinner that evening, Madame Borghese and 
the Countess Ite had both worn pale green evening 
dresses. Fitzmaurice had chaffed them. He called 
down the table to his grandmother that Italy and 
France were flying the same colors. The member 
for North Hackney had murmured something about 
the affinity of the Latin race — a half audible speech 
which had somehow missed its mark. After dinner 
they had both appeared in green Liberty coats 
trimmed with marabout which were the vogue that 
year. 

“We are carrying out the illusion,” said the 
Countess Ite, “that France and Italy are one.” 

“This beautiful world!” she exclaimed as she went 
down the steps. “Father Morot is waiting to tell us 
about morality, but everything beautiful is moral, 
don’t you think so, Fitzmaurice?” 

“There is always something wrong somewhere, 
about your statements, Nina,” said Fitzmaurice. “I 
suppose it is because they are so sweeping.” 

“Fitzmaurice, how ridiculous!” answered Nina, 
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“of course I must be sweeping. There are some 
women who go through life carried by their own 
momentum. They create a kind of movement which 
bears them along. As a type they are unmistakable. 
They show a preference for the colors of brown and 
amber. Like the defunct Empress of Russia, the 
truth is not in them. They exaggerate even when 
unnecessary, and they are constantly seeming to 
promise what they have no intention of fulfilling.” 

Fitzmaurice lighted his cigar. “Poor Nina,” he 
said. 

Dante followed Margherita with his eyes, but he 
was not permitted to join her. The Abbe Morot 
intercepted him. 

Father Morot was a Sulpician. He was born in 
Canada of poor parents, but on account of his 
scholarly mind and a peculiarly winning personality, 
he had been given great advantages by the Church of 
Rome. In appearance in Rome he had been often 
taken for Merry del Val and it was thought that 
even if he never was called to Rome to wear a red 
hat, he would at least have some important bishopric 
where his worldly knowledge could be turned to 
political account for his church. 

“Worldly in the world” was his motto. 

Indeed, he was wont to give a word of praise to 
Robert Browning on account of Bishop Blougram’s 
Apology. Rather tremendously it echoed his views. 
Not having made the world, he took it as it is; 
intending with the church’s hand to make the best of 
it. A fine belief he tempered to the shorn lamb^ and 


THE NEW WORLD 75 

being tolerant, it did not lie upon his heart the lamb 
was shorn. 

Again he quoted, “God’s sheep,” he said, “nbt 
mine.” 

So between church and state he kept his place and 
dealt in temperaments. At Foto, with his keen per- 
ception of Lady Hopetoune’s requirements of the fit- 
ness of things, he was always a little ultra-renuncia- 
tory of the world. And so well did he play his part, 
that Lady Hopetoune was constantly begging him to 
enter a little more into the spirit of the world. When 
through some outside source there reached her ears 
a report that Monsieur I’Abbe Morot had been nick- 
named “the worldly priest,” she smiled, her queer 
little twisted smile, as one who condones the natural 
denseness of human opinion. 

Having spent his boyhood on the banks of the St. 
Lawrence the Abbe Morot waylaid Dante to renew 
some memories. 

He walked up and down, the fingers of one hand 
touching the fingers of the other, as though, although 
the mind of the priest had ceased to pray, the hands 
retained its attitude. “And the news,” he said, 
“what is the news?” And not waiting for an answer, 
he went on to tell Dante how he had been born in a 
little village on the banks of the St. Lawrence. 

“It is a great river,” he said. “Not in your day, 
nor in mine, but later — later — on its banks some day 
will rise the world’s last Rome. It is the new Tiber. 
Yet to see Canada’s great hour, the Canadians of 
to-day are born too soon.” 


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“Life is simple in Canada,” answered Dante, try- 
ing to show he felt its limitations. 

“Yes,” said the Abbe. “It has neither gayety, nor 
humor, nor art. It can provoke neither passion, nor 
a great creative force, but it is building like the ant 
hills, slowly and surely in the sands of time.” 

“Surely, Father ” Dante broke off. He had 

been about to say he found it strange that one who 
believed so implicitly in his native country should 
have left it. Father Morot divined his thought. In 
the twilight he tossed his head and his cassock swept 
a little from side to side as he walked. It was the 
movement Beerbohm Tree used when impersonating 
Cardinal Wolsey. It bespoke ambition. 

“My son,” he said, “the soul has Its own ether, 
and the chemical elements of your soul and the 
chemical elements of mine may differ greatly. Life 
for the most part is a struggle between the soul and 
the body. Mainly this. All other experiences are 
subsidiary. At the last — one or the other triumphs. 
That is the little tale of man. But the wise psychol- 
ogist does not press his end too far. In certain 
instances It Is not wise to deny one’s self too much. 
The life of a French priest in Canada is denial. And 
Monsieur I’Abbe Morot Is not one to be persistently 
denied.” 

There was a moment’s pause. Then Dante said 
with a keener interest than he had shown : 

“Do you think then, that rigid abstinence brings a 
reaction? It Is a narrow vision.” 


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77 


Father Morot’s eyes flashed. *‘At least it is sane,” 
he said. “What is the end of the privations of war? 
Indulgence. Who are the revelers of every seaport? 
The mariners. The men who have been deprived of 
comfort and luxury, and who seek reaction. You 
see one ground of action in life. I see many. And 
if I were forced to choose one course for man, I 
would choose always — a temperate moderation. It 
brings upon its track no hungers.” 

The road, the new wide road upon which Dante 
had embarked was not in direct sympathy with a 
temperate moderation. It seemed a dead wisdom 
and he had but so lately come alive. 

“As an instance,” continued Father Morot, “I 
could almost illustrate by taking Madame Borghese’s 
husband.” 

At once every nerve in Dante’s body was listening. 

Father Morot lowered his voice. “He is in the 
diplomatic service. His youth was spent in study. 
No wild oats. No indiscretion. Not even legitimate 
pleasure. Only the functions necessary for the ser- 
vice and the advancement of his career. His name 
was known throughout Italy. A great son olfa great 
house. At the height of his promise. Lady Hope- 
toune secured him for her granddaughter. They 
were married. Then suddenly — something hap- 
pened, that definitely checked his career. Its exact 
nature is not known. Through the influence of his 
family it was hushed. But his career was at an end. 
Now one hears rumors of dissipation. The check 


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rein was too tight. Whether he can thread life on 
a new clew remains to be seen. He is older than his 

wife by fifteen years. And she ” 

In the darkness Dante’s eyes were bright. “And 

she,” he repeated — “she ” 

“We have wandered from the St. Lawrence,” said 
Father Morot. “You will return to Canada?” 

“I think so.” 

“Laurier is a leader of whom you may be proud.” 
Thus chatting they continued their walk. Dante 
tried to bring the conversation back to the Borgheses, 
but Monsieur I’Abbe was not amenable. It did not 
occur to Dante that Monsieur I’Abbe had already 
told him all that he intended. 


CHAPTER IX 


Jermyn Street, London 
April I St, 1911 

Old Ricci: Across the muddy fields of life there creeps a 
change. What do you do in Oxford? Have you forsaken 
Erota? Yet the novel dies. The great critics see the passing of 
its form. Wouldst thou be a lawyer, O ! young Dante, and settle 
the guarrels of little men? A doctor? Heal their puny ills. A 
parson? Save their sickly souls. Come back to Canada with 
me. We are your home. 

Payton. 

N. B. Young Wickfield is the Father of a flock. The flock 
tarries, but the firstling has arrived. I expect you and have 
taken your passage. P. 

Dante smiled. This letter, brought by the evening 
post, was so absurdly Paytonesque. For two years 
he had received no word from Payton and now as 
though from afar, Payton had discerned Dante’s 
changed state of feeling, his new interest, from 
nothingness he threw out a tentacle. For years the 
ideal thoughts of Dante’s life had been of Payton, 
but lately his life had widened. 

Fitzmaurice had entered with Albert Paul and 
MacAlistair, and then within the last few hours had 
come his absorbing interest in Margherita. 

When Dante had read this note, he folded it and 
put it in his pocket. Payton in London. Payton and 
he barely two hours apart. Payton’s square figure. 
Payton’s strong soul. He had never ceased to dream 
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of his recovery of Payton. And now against this 
hope which had sustained him, lay the wish to stay 
where he was and the inevitable ending of even a 
long Saturday to Monday. 

“Mr. Ricci,” Lady Hopetoune had said to him 
that evening. “My grandson is staying until 
Wednesday. I hope that you will stay and go back 
together.” 

It was a prolonging of his invitation, but it was as 
though she had really said, “Young man, you must 
leave us on Wednesday,” and it flashed through his 
mind how he was the victim of externals — conven- 
tional externals. It was clear he could gain no time. 

Out in the April air talking to the priest, at the 
thought of Margherita’s husband’s indifference, his 
heart had throbbed and he had gone into the draw- 
ing room merely to be near her. And looking up 
from the hand of bridge she was playing, at the sight 
of his shining eyes she had smiled as one who looks 
past the immediate foreground to something guessed, 
but indefinite beyond — and at that moment Lady 
Hopetoune had said : 

“Fitzmaurice prefers the seven o’clock train. I 
hope that won’t be too early, Mr. Ricci.” And he 
had counted exactly thirty-three hours more. And 
then Fitzmaurice had called him to come and look 
at some new flies, that had just come by post from 
town. And before he could detach himself from 
Fitzmaurice and his talk of sport, one of his two 
very precious evenings was almost gone. TKe cards 
and score cards still lay on the bridge tables, but the 


THE NEW WORLD 


8i 


games were over. Some of the guests were talking 
in the hall on their way upstairs. The drawing room 
was already empty. Dante walked through it. 
Someone had drawn the curtain from across the 
window and through the latticed casement — he saw 
the April moon. Opening the casement he took a 
breath of spring air and looked out. He heard a foot 
stir on the gravel path. Just below in the light of 
the moon, Dante saw Saki. His head was thrown 
back as if he were pulling someone towards him. 
Covered by his two hands he was holding against his 
chest a woman’s hand. Between Dante and the 
woman was a box tree. He could not see her face, 
but from her white arm, glistening in the moonlight, 
he saw the glint of green chiffon edged with mara- 
bout. “Margherita !” 

Dante closed the window and drew the curtain. 


CHAPTER X 


T uesday was Dante’s last day at Foto. Quite 
stubbornly all night he had tried to sleep. 
Round the corner and out of sight he counted 
lambs going through a gate, but each lamb presented 
some difficulty and they were not docile enough to be 
soporific. But morning comes and with it the real- 
ization that after all the loss of one night’s sleep is 
not so vital. 

Quite early he arose and went out to the garden. 
He walked down the terrace through the box walk 
to the vista. Here he descended a little slope to a 
field where he threw himself down on the grass. 

All night he had been thinking of Margherita. 
He remembered the glance full of admiration he had 
given her at the Abbey. She had not drawn away 
her eyes. She must have been making fun of him. 
She thought him just a boy. He put his hand over 
his eyes and fell to brooding again. He was jealous, 
with a dumb, gnawing jealousy of Saki. One 
moment he thought of taking the early morning train 
— of leaving at once. The next moment he said to 
himself that he would stay and show his indifference, 
but the business of love had begun to occupy him and 
in his chest like a flame was a constant ache. He lay 
on the grass for an hour and he arose quieter, more 
conscious that he would be able to seem indifferent. 


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83 


He thought as he looked at the gathering day, that 
he would go back to America. Yesterday he had felt 
impelled to action by a something vivid, an impulse 
that outran his mood. To-day it was the ache in his 
chest that made him wish to go. The wind blew a 
cloud over the morning sun and some sheep that had 
been cropping the grass drew near together. He 
watched them huddled close together. He turned 
and went back to the house. There was a will in him 
to save himself from suffering any more. He thought 
of the sheep. He wanted someone to huddle against 
when life went black. He thought of Payton. Yes 
— He would go back to America. 

When he got back to the house, the guests were 
not yet down, so he went up to his room to smooth 
his hair. 

All morning, possessed by a determination to in- 
difference, he kept away from Margherita. After 
luncheon he went down to the stables with Fitz- 
maurice, and while Fitzmaurice planned a new 
device, Dante watched Fitzmaurice’s hunter in her 
loose box nosing out some last grains of corn. Then 
with Fitzmaurice he walked across the fields to the 
village. 

“The Widow Clasky,” Fitzmaurice was saying, 
“wants a new roof. I am sure the leakage could be 
mended, but I am afraid I shall have to give her 
one.” 

“It must be after four,” Dante thought. “If we 
are too late for tea, I shall not see her until dinner 
time.” 


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And the voice in his heart which was the voice of 
jealousy, reiterated that he was doing well. He 
would leave with a clear escutcheon. 

So the day died away and dinner came. And at 
dinner, instead of being beside Margherita, he found 
himself between Nina and the clergyman’s daughter 
who had driven over from the rectory. And oppo- 
site, Margherita was talking in a very animated 
manner to a Captain Sellas, who had motored over 
from a neighboring park. 

And Dante thought now there is only the little 
time in the drawing room, before she plays bridge, 
because to-morrow, before she is up, I shall 
be gone. But he did not admit to himself that above 
the voice of jealousy — above the plan of his indif- 
ference all day had rung in his ears the cry “some- 
thing will happen — something will happen.” 

Bridge began that evening as soon as the men 
came from the smoking room. The players dealt 
and played; dealt and played. Nina cut out and 
went to the piano to strum a rhapsody. 

The Abbe Morot sat with his legs crossed and his 
left hand resting on his chest between the buttons of 
his cassock. 

Lady Hopetoune went from guest to guest, and 
the evening passed. 

Dante had been in a corner of the drawing room 
looking at an old edition of the Faerie Queene. 

There was a sound of chairs drawn back, of foot- 
steps going to the hall. He turned to find that people 
were going to bed. 


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He saw the long, rose-colored drawing room with 
its bright chintz covers, and Margherita standing 
in the oak frame of the door. He knew that she was 
moving out of his life, that presently she would go 
up the oak stairway and vanish, and he was power- 
less to keep her, and a wild rage at his lost day took 
possession of him. 

The grandfather’s clock in the hall chimed the 
chimes of Westminster, as Margherita held out her 
hand to say good-by. Dante followed her to the foot 
of the steps. They were a little in advance of the 
others — there was no one within earshot. He 
pointed to a flower she wore. “Give me that,” he 
said huskily. 

Madame Borghese seemed about to refuse, but as 
she looked at him there came into her eyes a look of 
indulgence. Quietly she took out the pin that fas- 
tened the flower and gave it to him. 









PART TWO 


THE REINS OF OFFICE 

“Keep thy heart with all diligence 
for out of it are the issues of life.” 

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CHAPTER XI 


T WO years had passed since his visit to Foto. 
That journey to Canada, resolved on so sud- 
denly, had taken place. In June he had set out 
with Payton with his face set to his own land. It 
was in these two years, that he had become conscious 
of the business world for the first time. The gracious 
cultivation that had shone out so pleasingly in his life 
at Oxford was absent in the men with whom he was 
thrown after his return. Here there seemed to be a 
continual going forward and no dreams. 

‘‘America looks good to me,” said the Chicago 
pork butcher, standing by Dante’s side on the deck of 
the Lusitania as she steamed past the Statue of 
Liberty. And that in part was the western attitude. 

A whistling intake of breath. A perpetual pok- 
ing forward of the shoulders in preparation for 
action. 

Dante did not stay in the United States. He 
moved on to Canada. About that time, Canadian 
enterprises were first adopting the American plan of 
business. The business man had his ear to the 
ground and, in the American phrase, with a little 
awkwardness and amateurishness, he was trying to 
“step lively.” 

The Canadian business man Dante found to have 


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a Scotchman’s self-consciousness. He was a little 
afraid of the outside view of himself. He minded 
the onlooker. But he had, too, a Scotchman’s 
thoroughness, and he was dogged. 

Payton awoke Dante to these ideas. 

When Dante saw Payton again he felt his ideas 
had changed very greatly, but they had merely be- 
come more definite. Payton wasn’t aggressive, or 
particularly snobbish, but his manners were passable, 
his personality almost magic, and it became particu- 
larly evident that prominent and amusing people 
were generally glad to have him. His effect upon 
most people was considerable. 

Struggling upward in confusion as Dante was, 
Payton’s steady hand helped to clarify him. 

Dante had intended vaguely to gravitate some- 
where between politics and literature, but his mind 
had a tendency to vacillation and he had been unable 
to concentrate on one great effort. The first gather- 
ing together of the forces of his being was the effect 
of the attraction he felt for Margherita. The lurk- 
ing force in him was further developed by Payton. 

In spite of the fundamental difference in their tem- 
peraments, they had much in common. Payton dared 
to come nearer to the truth than most men, and with 
the bushes parted, Dante followed. About the in- 
communicable difficulties of life Payton was clear. 
Once in the saddle, he rode hard and straight. He 
had strength, he had charm, and he had passion in 
its best sense, namely, an intermittent flame of soul 
to an enterprise, an idea, even to a friend, but to the 


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finely beautiful possibility of sex Payton turned a 
deaf ear. 

Often when two or three men were in Payton’s 
rooms if the talk slipped to women, Dante remem- 
bered seeing Payton grow restive, knock out his pipe, 
move a few inanimate objects from place to place and 
finally say — “O! shut it, you chaps.” 

Now in the year when Dante returned with Pay- 
ton, Payton’s convicting Idea was the forming of a 
pulp and paper company. He had a plan “that 
Canada,” as he largely put it, “should feed the body 
and mind of the world.” With Its wheat it was to 
feed the body, and with Its paper it was to provide 
the printing material for the world’s mind. Probably 
no man with Payton’s wideness gets through without 
the repetition of great Ideas. 

Now it happened that old Bailey, the father of 
Payton’s school friend White-face, was at that time 
president and in control of two important pulp com- 
panies, and about that time it became clear to him 
that the vital activities of his life were over. So, 
being in a measure supreme with his directorate and 
having had White-face in training since his Hailey- 
bury days, Bailey pere so manipulated the currents 
of fate, that at a very early age and in the course 
of heredity. White-face stepped Into the president’s 
chair. It was there Payton found him when he came 
back with his dream of paper for the world. Stim- 
ulated by what seemed the expression of his own 
power. White-face enjoyed his social aggrandize- 


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ment and let the reins lie loosely on the back of the 
pulp companies. 

From president to general manager. From gen- 
eral manager to department managers, this was felt. 
Overhead charges increased, output did not corre- 
spondingly increase. 

Payton always made it clear that he got his 
appointment as general manager from the directors. 
In any case it was at this juncture that the appoint- 
ment was made. There was a meeting of the board. 
A director arose, made the announcement that in his 
opinion and that of several others a new manager 
should be appointed, as profits were declining. Be- 
fore subsiding into his chair, he mentioned casually 
that he did not wish to make any suggestion, but if 
his fellow directors found it difficult to make the 
appointment, he knew of one whom he considered 
might be just their man. There was some objec- 
tions, the usual objections with the usual over-rulings. 
In the end Payton was made an offer in writing and 
asked, if he considered it, to come before the board. 

Dante often wondered whether, when Payton 
made it a condition that the appointment be for five 
years, he had his plans intact. He confronted Payton 
with it, and Payton denied it vociferously. 

Dante used to go into his office in those early days 
and see old Payton sitting back, smoking a strong 
cigar in the manner of a man who has no care in life, 
and being something of a new broom in his very new 
appointment of assistant to the general manager, and 
wishing to deal very immediately with the elusive 


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question of assets and liabilities, Dante was induced 
to reproach his superior officer. Payton’s shadowy 
answer came between the puffs of his strong cigars — 
it supported the policy of waiting. The first half of 
the year 1912, which was the first half-year after 
the change of management, showed a reduction of 
surplus. At the meeting it was pointed out that the 
new manager had not yet had time to make any 
changes. 

The report for the second half of 1912 showed an 
increase of overhead charges and a further reduction 
in surplus. 1913 was embarked upon. A director 
remarked that the new manager would now begin to 
make himself felt. 

Looking back with a great clarity, Dante under- 
stood the events of the first of 1913, but at the time 
they were strangely unintelligible. One peculiarity 
that detached itself and hung like a dark star above 
his horizon was Payton’s absolute lack of purpose. 
He sat in his office, calm and smiling, talking simply 
about anything and everything, always seemingly 
delighted to be interrupted by any and every stupid 
fellow. 

Dante learned what business anxiety was In those 
first months. In that subconscious self by which 
women are so tremendously guided and which they 
call Instinct, Dante was sure. At no time In his life 
did Dante’s subconsciousness doubt Payton’s ability. 

But reason, which is wont to sit high in one’s 
analysis of others, reason constantly challenged 
instinct’s verdict. In the black shadows was security 


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and assurance of all being well. Alone with Payton, 
Dante was sure of him, but away from him, criticism 
started across the path. The shareholders grew 
sullen and a little glowering. The business made no 
progress. The managers were not exhorted to any 
glittering effort, not even curtailed in any manner. 
Payton had always been intangible. His inertia 
became baffling. It was ridiculous how Dante took 
it to heart. In the first place he felt that to others 
the actual vision of Payton was denied them, they 
could not see. Their interest was in actualities, not 
in boundaries, widened boundaries. That was Pay- 
ton, the man of big areas, and shareholders 
wanted actualities expressed in dividends. Well they 
would see. But the moons that wax and wane and 
hasten not and are not retarded found the outlook 
still a little deserted and devoid of improvement. 

As White-face Bailey gave himself up to the 
invitations and little indulgences that came to him 
in his new appointment and enlarged income; as 
Payton sat in his beautifully appointed office with its 
priceless rug and heavy and expensive furniture; 
Dante, with the naivete and heroic effort of youth, 
rushed hither and thither. Metaphorically he 
cracked his whip and ambled along and some saw- 
dust flew up, but nothing was very greatly changed 
or improved. Dante had neither the experience, nor 
the power. 

An on-looker could have seen at once the situation 
in those days. The desperation of the venture. The 
directors anxious. White-face self-indulgent. Payton 


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intangible and baffling, and Dante furiously anxious 
and vehemently wishing to create a happy business 
basis and save Payton’s honor. There is so much 
that is tyrannical in affection. Had he not been 
dominated by his sense of Payton and his wish to be 
loyal to Payton, it might have happened that he 
could have been more efficient, but his first thought 
was Payton, his second the Paper Company. 

It was about June that the market, with its strange 
facility for discounting in advance coming events, 
began to comment on the continued slump in Paper 
shares. Dante hated the cursed misery of the Stock 
Exchange page of the evening paper. He did not 
in reality know the facts that may govern the price 
of a stock. The Stock Exchange seemed to him cen- 
tered in a prehistoric beast that now drew one side 
of its body out of the waters of darkness, now 
another. To Dante it seemed as though the mem- 
bers of the Stock Exchange spent their days in watch- 
ing the movement of this scaly beast. Left — right. 
Left — right. 

To Eastern incantations and in Eastern supersti- 
tion the days passed. And then — a movement of the 
waters. A craning of the watching necks. Which 
side was coming up? A glimpse of a scaly back 
before the waters closed again, and the evening ver- 
dict, “Cotton up and the paper stocks down.” And 
all the time the stock of the Pulp and Paper Com- 
pany was tumbling, looking over the domes and tur- 
rets of the city, Payton sat in his office with the air 
of one of the Intelligentsia. 


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“Look here, Payton,” Dante interrupted one day. 
“Can I talk to you alone for a minute?” 

And the typist having betaken herself elsewhere, 
the opportunity found Dante tongue-tied. Raising 
himself from the casual life he was leading, Payton 
looked at Dante for a moment as though he had sud- 
denly to deal with something that took all his 
reserve. 

Dante rushed in recklessly — he had never sur- 
prised that sudden pale sensitiveness in Payton 
before. It frightened him, so he flung out his words 
without choosing them. 

“You’re not trying . . . Payton — I can see that 
of course . . . These men, they have seen nothing 
of you yet . . . They don’t know what you could 
do. . . . And you are not trying. The damned thing 
is going to the dogs — I don’t know what it is. Why 
you are not trying?” he broke off. 

There occurred then a little pause, like the hush 
that comes as the wind changes and the storm blows 
another way. When Dante looked up, Payton’s gaze 
had regained its settled calm, he had gone back 'to 
the casual life, but that look he had surprised in 
Payton’s face continued to puzzle him. 

And then sitting through the last hours of the 
afternoon, Payton discoursed on the Canadian busi- 
ness man. He seemed oddly interested in him. Also 
in a way, he seemed to despise him. 

“Nipper,” he said, falling back to his old nick- 
name, “Canada is not yet, but one of my thoughts is 
that Canada is going to be. One need not begrudge 


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It Its little Inadequacies, Its awkwardness, Its In- 
efficiency, because Canada Is going to be. I have been 
watching the Canadian man, Nipper, quite closely. 
I have watched him working, watched him playing. 
I even took a trip to New York at Easter to watch 
him there, because sometimes you can surprise a new 
stratum in a man when he is away from home and off 
guard. Well, Nipper,” Payton tapped his pencil on 
his desk, “he is damned awkward, but he Is going to 
be and if he ever forgets his self-consciousness, he Is 
going to be rather tip top.” 

The eagerness, the idealism, that Payton spun 
around his images made them very interesting. 

“The great gusts of life blow through many lands, 
but Canada’s day will come, Nipper. Canada’s day 
will come.” 

So Payton talked on, until the afternoon grew old, 
but that day stood out in Dante’s memory. His own 
effort to exhort Payton to action. Payton’s queer 
expression, and then Payton’s long dissertation on the 
business man, as if this enthusiasm broke for a 
moment through his studied calm. 

Wandering home In the warm June evening Dante 
could not reconcile the two Ideas : Payton’s keenness 
and Payton’s apathy. Of all the answers, the one 
that came to his mind was the one he dreaded most. 
It was the philosophy of an Idea expounded to him 
by a man he had known in Oxford. This man had 
lived for some years in Russia and sometimes when 
his fellow guests at an undergrad party were wont 
to expect him to be amusing, something In him would 


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make him speak of the Russian character, or, as he 
called it, the Russian psychology. 

He found it difficult to resist praising them. And 
over his wine, he plunged into an account of the 
Russian enthusiasms. Strange dreams he had of 
Russia, but that Russia would ever find herself, he 
did not honestly believe. He would describe a night 
wherein the devotees of freedom had talked of their 
hopes until the dying away of darkness and the pale 
fingers of dawn felt their way into the room, and 
even as he talked the hushed expectation of his 
hearers grew less complete and before he gave voice 
to it, into the hearts of his hearers had crept an 
inevitable conviction. 

How well he described those nights. The oratory, 
the deep response in those who listened, the promise 
of the future, the certain assembling of the forces of 
good. And then at the height of his discussion, his 
voice would soften, his eye grow dim as if memory 
had stepped in to blow out the little flame. 

“Well,” the men would say, “what came of those 
queer nights of talk, what came of them?” 

And stiff in his chair, fingering his glass, he would 
answer, “Nothing.” 

“Did those moments not count at all?” 

“No,” he said, “we simply talked our enthusiasm 
out.” 

As he wandered home that June evening, Dante 
felt the poignancy of the memory. How terrible if 
Payton never got away from the undercurrent of life 
— if he, too, simply talked his enthusiasm out. 


CHAPTER XII 


T he gentle hand of June ushered in July, but it 
did not at the same moment fill the coffers of 
the Paper and Pulp Company sufficiently to 
pay the July dividend. 

The gossip in the Street was, of course, that this 
accounted for the slump in June. The dividend was 
passed. 

Payton caught Dante eyeing him again. There 
were comments from many quarters, and although, 
since his interview in June, Dante had endeavored 
to be reserved and discreet, his feelings were im- 
petuous enough. 

In the warm evening air of those July days, Dante 
tried to forget the talk of the day — all the criticism, 
the unrest — in his thoughts of Margherita. 

From time to time he heard from Fitzmaurice. 
He had not gone straight into Parliament, but had 
determined “to look,” as he called it, “into the con- 
ditions of the common people.” He wanted to be 
patriotic together, not so much the rich with the 
poor, because Fitzmaurice did not hold unduly to 
wealth, but the high and the low that they should be 
one, and being a patrician this fraternizing that he 
tried to put upon himself came hard. 

And Dante clung to his friendship with Fitz- 


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maurice partly because of his personality, of his 
innate rareness of soul, but partly, too, because of 
his relationship to Margherita. 

In June Fitzmaurice wrote that Margherita was 
at Foto. That renewed his memories. In the 
evenings he shut his eyes and his ears to worries over 
which he seemed to have no control and he walked 
along the pavements cogitating on his hunger for 
happiness and the end that is never sure. He was 
still young enough to feel called by something un- 
speakably great. And too young to have the power 
to lay tangible hold on what was as yet merely a 
vision. 

One evening as he walked along in the twilight 
musing, a figure pushed past him and walked in the 
same direction a little ahead of him. Its familiarity 
brought back Dante’s wandering thoughts. It was 
like and yet not like something he had known. The 
gait was meager and shuffling and uncertain. Then 
suddenly, impressions began to turn over each other 
very quickly in Dante’s brain. It was it cer- 
tainly was 

“Wickfield,” he called, increasing his pace. 

The little man turned around. He took out from 
his coat a rather crumpled handkerchief and began 
dabbing his face with it. 

“I knew you at once,” said Dante. “I’m Ricci. 
Don’t you remember?” 

Wickfield gave a queer impression of uneasiness. 
It was always with him as though he had been taken 
at the most inopportune moment. Still he put out 


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his hand as one performing a rite in which he in- 
dulged, but seldom. The curtain was up again on 
the old Haileybury days, so Dante felt, but as they 
walked on, it became clear that the curtain was 
merely up on Wickfield as a spectacle. 

Confused he was, with no clear knowledge of 
the things for which life exists. No sweep of life. 
No splash of color, just a shambling, plodding to an 
indefinite end. 

Dante chaffed him on his marriage. The first 
Haileybury boy to give up his freedom, and as he 
chaffed him, he realized that Wickfield had never 
had any freedom to give up. He was not discon- 
tented — he didn’t grumble, he was like a horse who 
had always been between the shafts. Wickfield came 
out from his boyhood what he had always been. 

And there flashed through Dante’s mind the 
truism of the German philosopher. “Character 
never changes, it merely develops.” 

In a bewildered fashion, against his inclination, 
Wickfield conversed. 

As they parted he peered into Dante’s face 

“You are with Payton, aren’t you?” he asked. 

He stood there in the dusk, pathetic and untidy 
and fearful. 

“You had better get out,” he said. “Bailey told 
someone if Payton couldn’t make a showing he would 
have to go. You’d better get out and fend for 
yourself.” 

In an instant Dante’s love of Payton reared itself. 
“Nonsense,” he said curtly, “Payton has full con- 


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trol.” He knew Wickfield could tell him nothing, so 
he asked no more. Wickfield mumbled something 
and shuffled away. 

Dante and Payton were sharing rooms together. 
That evening Payton was out. Dante could not 
settle to anything. He felt uneasy and hot. He 
tried to read, but put down his book. Then he werit 
to the window and watched the motors rolling along 
the street. 

It was after eleven when Payton came in. He 
switched on the light, saw Dante standing by the 
window and realized he was waiting for him. Pay- 
ton put his straw hat on the table and threw his 
gloves into it. 

“Well, Nipper,” he said quietly. 

“I don’t know where you’ve been, but I have been 
waiting for you all evening,” Dante said. 

“Well, what is it?” Payton asked irritably. 

Dante had always imagined that the chief motive 
in Payton’s life was his pride. He stood up to the 
world in a haughty, isolated manner, as though he 
despised it utterly. Dante felt that if he could get 
home to him the omen that his pride was endan- 
gered, that Payton might ride through his reserves 
to victory. 

It is hard to know just why, but ninety per cent of 
young men with their way to make in the world 
would rather step into a ready-made position than 
make a place for themselves. The method of a 
man’s advancement must be left to his own con- 
science, and in the ready-made position, he stands to 


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risk less, although in the long run, he stands to lose 
more. Dante had stepped into a well-paid job 
without any effort. It was too good to lose. As he 
talked, a consciousness of that crept through Pay- 
ton’s bones. 

“Nipper,” he asked, “you like the Paper Com- 
pany?” 

Dante felt a ridiculous affront. 

In spite of himself the color flooded his face. 

Payton drew near to him under the middle light. 

“All the things, all the little things you fear are 
nothing,” he said, “I’ve a cast-iron contract, they 
can’t break it.” 

“You must understand,” said Dante sharply, “that 
if the International fails — the link is snapped. Your 
contract I fancy would be useless — What do you say 
to that?” 

Without waiting for an answer he turned and 
went through the door to his own room. Then there 
stirred in Payton’s heart a slender ghost. 

He saw again the old canal at Haileybury. He 
saw the road leading away to the red roofs of the 
school and after him he heard the padding of a boy’s 
feet — and then a little breathless, “I think you are 
wonderful, I really do.” 

“Poor Nipper, he does not think me wonderful 
now,” said Payton to himself. 

A moment later the ghost was gone. 


CHAPTER XIII 


S IX months went by. Recent events had proved 
disquieting. Apprehensive and fearful, Dante 
waited for the first business enterprise in which 
he had been involved to crash. 

During those six months, as the days came and 
went, again and again, the rift between Dante and 
Payton seemed to widen. First there was estrange- 
ment, then a definite breach of opinion and then a 
very strenuous effort on Dante’s part to pull back 
into the old relationship. 

In this way the two passed their time together. 

And because the strongest tie in Dante’s life was 
Payton, the odd fairy-tale world in which he lived 
seemed to darken except in those dreamy hours when 
he still thought of Margherita. 

He felt as he knew Payton drifting, drifting away 
from him that the most important thing, the thing he 
must struggle for, was to get him back. 

He had no conception of subtlety in the matter, he 
hung about, as it were, and waited. 

About this time he clung to his new habit. The 
habit of taking long walks alone after dusk had 
fallen. With his collar turned up and the wind 
whistling about his ears, he walked with his hands 
in the pockets of his Burberry coat. 

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Hurrying along the street, a vast expanse of things 
grew clear to him, and facts stood out and were 
colored faintly. Under the street lamps came the 
first whispered consciousness of free will. The little 
fact that explained the black cloud hanging above 
him, the fact that he wasn’t molding — on the con- 
trary, he was being driven. He raised his eyes and 
met the gaze of the men and women hurrying in the 
opposite direction, they, too, looked driven like the 
autumn leaves blown by the wind upon the mountain. 
And as he walked, his hands clenched in his pockets, 
and the wind falling on his face, he felt in his heart 
a new feeling as if a withered muscle was beginning 
to have strength and that one day he, too, would 
have — courage. It was not his old blind consciousness 
I of power, not the impassioned urging of superiority, 
but it was a steady quiet and when it came, although it 
did not bring him happiness, at some rare moments, 
it brought him peace. And Payton, in those autumn 
days that he was getting on Dante’s nerves and press- 
ing Dante back into himself, Payton developed a 
curious bombast. 


Never had he worn such marvelous clothes, never 
had everything about him seemed so new. Waist- 
coats arrived from Bond street. Ties matched them- 
selves too happily with socks, but the thing that 
offended Dante most, the thing that ever after was 
to identify itself with one of the uneven periods of 
Dante’s life was a certain brown bowler hat. There 
are men who should never attempt to wear a bowler 
hat. It seemingly tempts Providence too far, if it 


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is black and luck is with them, they may be over- 
looked, but if it is brown, there is no hope. 

Crowned in his bowler hat, Payton swaggered 
along, and each morning as Payton put it on his head 
and then hit it with a “pump” upon the crown, Dante 
braced himself to meet the coming crash, and it 
occurred to him how one man reveals another. How 
if he had never known the refinement of Fitzmaurice, 
he could hardly have realized Payton’s swagger. 

Suddenly Payton branched out into horses. After 
all, it was a small matter, but Dante wondered that 
he was not tormented by conscientious scruples. It 
seemed at this time as if the root and soul of Payton 
was that he was ambitious. Many a morning at least 
an hour after he had arrived Dante watched him 
drive up to the building of the Paper Company with 
its spacious offices on the first floor. The pair of 
bays, deftly guided, wheeled in and drew up in front 
of the main entrance. 

“How’s this?” asked Dante, crimson in the face. 
“Why this new extravagance ?” 

“Swank,” said Payton, “to reassure the share- 
holders.” 

“But the directors don’t pay for it.” 

“Exactly,” said Payton, “that is why it impresses 
them.” 

And then by a delayed post in January came the 
Christmas mail. 

Fitzmaurice wrote of his political aspirations; of 
Albert Paul and his shadowy projects; of Mac- 
Alistair and the seven things he was doing for a 


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living. And then at the end like little muffled bells 
were the words. “You remember my cousin, Mar- 
gherita. Her husband goes on a mission to Canada 
and the United States. You will doubtless see her.” 
That cheered him, but he had yet to learn in life of 
the things that have a true value and those that have 
not. Because Margherita was coming, he clung 
more tenaciously to his little office. And he listened 
to the promptings of his pride. She would ask him 
what he was doing, and he would tell her of the 
Paper Company. And the voice of pride stilled the 
withered muscle that was beginning to have strength. 
“Why should he take Wickfield’s advice ? Payton was 
strong, Payton would pull through.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


A GAYETY serene and imperturbable was the 
mood of Payton. Apparently he took noth- 
ing seriously. Side by side with the mixed 
motives of life go its little dramatic intrigues and 
misunderstandings. In this piquant episode of his 
career, when White-face, under the parental cloak, 
seemed a menace, Payton quoted to Dante from 
Haileybury, as he expressed it, “little sparrow on the 
path of my ambition.” Men who put into operation 
financial schemes often have a great dramatic sense. 
Payton played to the gallery always. The lonely 
little interludes scattered up and down most lives, the 
loving glimpses of humanity we may think the 
natural portion of each and all, were unknown to 
Payton. His life was like the life of Disraeli, a 
conspiracy. 

What struck Dante as further difficult to under- 
stand was that at the end of February, just before 
the annual meeting, when Payton ought to have been 
looking to his proxies and making himself as solid as 
he could, he complained of the tedious winter and 
betook himself to New York. 

When he had gone Dante could not bear to be 
absent from the office, he felt about it as one some- 
times feels about the sick-room of someone who is 
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109 


dear; he might be able to do nothing, but he must be 
there. Beyond the office was a steady hum, like the 
distant whirr of a great machine. And as he listened 
to the sounds of activity Dante felt that even yet 
something might save the situation. Then a very 
strange thing happened. 

The stock, which had been as high as 130, had 
sold down to 35. “The scaly beast,” as Dante said, 
“was out of the water with its wrong side up.” 

And the strange thing that happened was that 
someone had begun quietly to absorb the stock. 
Never would Dante forget the applause he felt for 
that poor fool. He, Dante, was “in the know.” He 
knew the situation was critical. Even White-face, 
between his pleasures, was irritable and recurrent to 
a Haileybury habit when uncertainty beset him of 
biting his nails. 

Dante, in the know, gloated that the scaly beast 
had got a goat. 

For some days the buying went on. Stock came 
out pretty readily at a ten-point rise. The men in the 
Icnow were putting to cover. 

Then one afternoon when two weeks’ quiet ab- 
sorption of the stock had gone on. White-face Bailey 
came in with an idea. 

“Damn it, Ricci,” he said, “where’s Payton? I 
believe someone is buying control.” 

Dante caught the fear in White-face. 

“Payton ought to be here,” said White-face. 
“Send for him.” 

So, hot foot, Dante wired Payton to come home. 


no 


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Next morning Dante was up betimes. He thought 
of meeting Payton at the station, but on second 
thoughts, not knowing which of the two lines he 
would come by, he decided to wait for him at home. 

Eight o’clock came. Dante felt the train ought 
to be in. Still, one train was later than the other. 
Eight-thirty. Nine o’clock. Dante telephoned both 
stations. Both trains were in. 

At 9.30 he got a night letter: 

Giving a dinner party at Sherry’s on Tuesday. Cannot leave 
before. 

Payton. 

“Well,” said White-face, as soon as Dante ap- 
peared at the office, “did he turn up?” 

Dante hesitated. He could not bear White-face 
to think Payton casual, or shirking responsibilities. 

“He was to go to the country with some friends,” 
said Dante. “My wire may have missed him. I 
daresay anyway he will be home to-morrow.” 

White-face was a weakling scared. He lost his 
temper. He stormed about — swore that Payton had 
always taken things too coolly. That the directors 
would not stand for it. And Dante, anxious to con- 
ciliate White-face for Payton, hardly dared defend 
Payton. 

“Of course,” said Dante, “Payton owns a block of 
stock that they gave him when they made him man- 
ager, and being away, he won’t have realized. That 
will be to the good.” 

“I know,” said White-face. “I got rid of some of 
my holdings a week ago, but now a broker tells me 


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III 


all the buying seems to come from one source. That 
is very strange.” 

Dante sent Payton one or two abortive wires, but 
knowing Payton as he did, he knew if Payton said 
Tuesday, even if he went to New York himself. Pay- 
ton would not be persuaded, and again he felt that 
he dared not leave, that in case something happened 
that he could do, he must be there. 

On Wednesday evening, the night after Payton’s 
dinner party when he was to leave for home, there 
appeared in the evening paper a short paragraph 
intimating that the control of the Paper Company 
had passed into other hands. 

There was a sound, a turning of the knob, and 
White-face burst into Payton’s office, which Dante, 
as assistant, shared. White-face gave a scornful 
laugh. Each man held in his hand the evening paper. 
“They’ll oust Payton now,” said White-face, “and 
you, my young Galahad, will have to toddle.” 

A slow and painful red mounted to Dante’s 
cheeks. 

“Naturally,” he said, “I go with Payton.” 

“Hobson’s choice, old boy,” said White-face. 

White-face’s expression changed, it became 
shrewd. 

“They’ll probably keep me anyway, on account of 
the Governor,” he said. Dante wanted to retaliate, 
but he recovered himself with a strong effort. He 
felt nothing was certain, for Payton’s sake he had 
better not say too much. But the war dogs of 
White-face were loosed. 


II2 


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‘‘You’ll have to go now,” he cried, a triumphant 
flash passing across his sallow face. “I wanted them 
to fire you six months ago, but Payton wouldn’t hear 
of it.” 

^ A sudden angry light leapt into Dante’s eyes. 
Blindly he held himself in check. 

“Payton is inexperienced and strong,” White-face 
said, “but you are inexperienced and weak.” 

“And you,” said Dante in a shaking voice, “are a 
rotten Laodicean. I’m going home.” 

He snatched his hat and overcoat from the rack 
and without waiting to put them on, he bolted 
through the door. 

So great was his confusion of mind, that he had 
been some time in the street before he remembered 
to put them on. He walked blindly. He was well 
aware that by a strange stroke of fate he had been 
landed in a position to which he should have come 
by certain stages. But the truth spoken by White- 
face, although half-consciously acknowledged, was 
like a bucketful of ice water. At it, a feeling of 
enmity against White-face arose in his mind so 
intense that he could hardly keep from shaking him. 
And so for hours he walked the streets until fatigue 
stole through his shaking limbs and modified his 
passion of anger. 

It was strange how he cared for Payton. White- 
face had hurt — had wanted to hurt him. 

Dante saw quite clearly White-face had done him 
a service. Through all these last months when Pay- 
ton had been seemingly drifting away, behind 


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113 

Dante’s back, Payton had been loyal. Dante felt the 
muscles around his mouth stiffen. 

White-face had told him. Payton wouldn’t let 
them turn him out. 

And he had been so strongly aware of his own good 
intentions, that he had been impatient of the real 
conditions. 

Dante smiled. White-face’s stone had brought 
down the bird, but not in the way he intended. 

And as he walked he thought how much easier it 
was to lose a job than to lose an ideal. Payton was 
loyal. No wishy-washy speeches. But straight 
from the shoulder, behind his back. That gave life 
a curve. He wanted terribly to measure up to it. 
And when, tired with walking, he was sitting quietly 
in his room, he decided to try day by day to modify 
Payton’s failure. He must not realize it. He must 
never realize that he, Payton, had tried an ordinary 
enterprise and failed. Not for a moment. And as 
he resolved, with a kind of exultation, to stand 
between Payton and his missed mark, the lamp of 
peace that had first kindled in his long walks against 
the winds of autumn was alight again. 

“Wake up, my son,” said a familiar voice. 

Dante raised his head from his arms. He had 
never been to bed. That uncomfortable attitude had 
been a sort of sacrament to him until, towards morn- 
ing, his mind had entered into a state of sleep. 

The spring sun was streaming through the win- 
dow. Dante lifted his eyes and saw Payton standing 
looking down upon him. 


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114 

“Well, Nipper,” he repeated, “the Prodigal has 
returned.” 

Joy sprang into Dante’s face, but only for a 
moment, for almost at once he remembered the news 
he had to break. He said: 

“It’s pretty good to see you.” 

“Been making a night of it?” said Payton. 

Dante smiled. “In a way,” he said. 

Payton looked. There were circles under Dante’s 
eyes, his face was yellow : he looked a bit rocky. 

“The beastly feminine,” said Payton. 

Dante got up and walked to the window. 

“No,” he said in an off-hand tone; “but as a mat- 
ter of fact there is something.” 

“Obviously,” said Payton. 

There was a little pause. The night before 
Dante had rehearsed what he intended to say, now 
he couldn’t remember. 

“It’s not sure,” he said with his hands deep in his 
pockets, “but they — they say a new crowd have got 
control.” 

He didn’t look around. 

“It’s a bit stiff. I tried to get you to realize it and 
come back. I suppose you didn’t realize.” 

Dante went on with his testimony. He persistently 
looked out of the window. He didn’t want to see 
Payton’s eyes, if Payton minded. 

“It’s a bit stiff, but you never really put your back 
into it. I wished you would, but I’m glad now. It’s 
different, a thing failing if you’ve never tried. It 


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115 

may hurt, but don’t let it. Bailey’s a swine and you 
never put your back into it.” 

Payton’s silence was disconcerting. say,” Dante 
said, wheeling around, “why can’t you speak?” 

Payton stood by the table. In his face was a look 
of great amusement. 

“I can’t help but feel astonishment,” said Dante, 
“that you take it like this. I hated to tell you — of 
course you lose your job.” 

Then Payton took off his brown bowler hat. 

“Life is a queer fabric,” he said. “Do you know 
who has bought control?” 

“No,” said Dante, “the papers didn’t say.” 

Payton looked Dante in the eyes. 

“I have,” Payton said; “that is what I was doing 
in New York. The mud-horse has now the lead.” 


CHAPTER XV 


TOU’VE been so serious, Nipper,” said Payton 
I to him that evening. “You must come back 
to the fun of things.” 

“I know,” said Dante slowly. “Life gets like an 
old tin pot that you go on hitting with an anvil. 
Mind you, I still believe in having a purpose in life.” 

“You doubted mine,” Payton remarked. “And 
yet it was the only way. Bailey always had a down 
on you. I believe it dates back to that first day at 
Haileybury, when I made him buy your boots.” 

Dante laughed. 

“They were too big,” he said. 

“Rather,” said Payton, “he is the kind of swine 
who sports small hoofs.” 

Payton pulled away at his pipe. “Bailey as a per- 
petual president was an intolerable prospect. I felt 
that he must go.” 

“Not everyone could have done it,” said Dante. 

The ghost stirred in Payton’s heart. “A man can 
do anything he has a mind to,” he replied. “That 
is one of the sad facts of life. Everything is so 
appallingly easy.” 

Dante sat thinking for an interval, and then went 
on. “Poor Bailey, he took it rather hard when he 
found the tables were turned on him. There are all 

Ii6 


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117 

sorts of weaknesses in Bailey, he is just self-indul- 
gence, and mush, you wonder God lets him live. 
There ought to be a war to kill off the Baileys.” 

Payton considered. “There may be,” he said, “just 
around the corner, one never knows.” 

“The world is too modern,” said Dante with 
decision. “There couldn’t. You see, war wouldn’t 
stop at the Baileys. And then, think how the world 
has progressed.” 

“At times,” remarked Payton, “I am not so sure. 
Scratch a human and he will fight — generally. I met , 
a man last week in New York, an Englishman. Been 
in the artillery. He says the war with Germany may 
come in our time.” 

“The Germans have their trade,” said Dante. 
“With an envious pleasure they see it gaining upon 
England. I hardly think, as yet, Germany will im- 
peril her trade. This projected war of England and 
Germany is a goblin England trots out when she 
wants another dreadnaught. No,” said Dante with 
decision, “I don’t believe this war will ever come. 
The Baileys must be got rid of in some other way.” 

Payton uncrossed his legs and leaned over the fire 
to knock the ashes out of his pipe. And as he caught 
sight of his profile, Dante wanted an intimate gleam 
of his soul. 

“Would you care for politics?” he asked. 

Payton shook his head. 

“Science ?” 

“No.” 

“Art?” 


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“Not much.’’ 

“Trade ?” 

Payton nodded. “A little,” he said. 

Dante leaned forward. “What interests you, old 
chap?” he asked. 

Payton blew out his pipe. 

“The dark passage of the human mind,” he 
answered. 


CHAPTER XVI 


T he end of the old world had come. The new 
world was beginning. But the vast number of 
people who make the world had no idea in 
those early days of July, 1914, that the Caillaux trial, 
the Home Rule Conference, the dockers’ strike in 
Liverpool, and other exceptional interests of daily 
life were being rolled up as a passing scroll. Each 
individual still had his own interests, little personal 
interests unlike anyone else’s. 

Germany had the initiative. She knew. 

An ocean liner steamed up the St. Lawrence on her 
westbound trip. Lying in a deck chair, wrapped in 
a fur-lined rug, lay a young woman. The sense of 
someone near made her look up. She saw a man 
standing by her chair with a Marconi in his hand. 
He spoke as though he was afraid of being heard. 

“I have a Marconi from the Embassy,” he said. 
“And letters were brought on board at Father 
Point.” 

“Really, Gabriele, you are very alarming. You 
are also quite mysterious.” 

The man shook his head, and adjusting his pince- 
nez, glanced at his companion. “Listen. Yesterday, 
the 23d, the Austro-Hungarian Minister at Bel- 
grade presented an ultimatum to the Serbian Gov- 


120 


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ernment. He has demanded a reply within forty- 
eight hours. The outlook is very grave.” 

Gabriele Borghese caught his breath, looked up 
and down the deck to be sure he was not heard. 
Something of his excitement communicated itself to 
his wife as he spoke. 

“If there is war — Italy won’t fight with Germany. 
She will be neutral. I shall have to go to Washing- 
ton. Of course there is a chance England keeps out 
of it — and Canada, too.” 

The woman tossed her head sharply against 
the back of the chair. She lifted her ungloved hand 
from under the rug and laid it against her cheek as 
if for coolness. Her hand trembled a little against 
her cheek. 

“You can settle that and be quite sure in your 
rnind about it,” she said shortly. “England will 
fight.” 

Her husband played with the black ribbon of his 
glasses. “I must ask you not to be so easily roused,” 
he said. “As the wife of a diplomat, you have no 
feelings.” 

'A sudden light sprang into Margherita’s eyes. 

“How little you know England, or English sub- 
jects. However ” She shrugged her shoulders, 

“as the wife of a diplomat I have no feelings.” 

Gabriele Borghese, despite the faux-pas which was 
in a measure, being lived down, was a most diplo- 
matic man. In a precise official manner he con- 
ducted everything pertaining to his life. “There are 
two distinct divisions in the world of men,” was one 


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I2I 


of his maxims, “the participators and the spectators. 
I am a spectator.” 

Margherita was silent. Gabriele paced up and 
down the deck. After a few times he stopped before 
her chair. He looked her straight in the eyes. 

“This changes our plans. I must be very careful 
about appearances. Until I know what I am doing, 
whether I am of use in Washington, you must take 
a house in Montreal. You have been delicate. We 
have come out to see whether the Canadian climate 
will benefit your health. You understand?” 

“I understand,” Margherita replied. 

Gabriele removed his glasses. His eyes were 
weak and the rims were inflamed. 

“If I find the Government needs me in Washing- 
ton, you can then give up your house and join me. 
If, on the other hand, my mission is useless, I shall 
have covered my retreat with the excuse of your 
health. Quite a devoted couple.” He laughed. 
Then seeing his joking grated on her feelings, he 
resumed a more serious tone. “I can, of course, 
count on your co-operation? I have the greatest 
need of all my mental powers.” 

Margherita sat bolt upright in her chair. 

“Yes, I shall wait in Montreal.” Her husband 
looked at her. He realized her heart was closed to 
him, but he had no wish to probe her feelings to find 
out what was going on in her heart. He felt her 
asserting her individuality. He shrugged his shoul- 
ders. If we look too deep, sometimes we see some- 
thing that we would rather not see. 


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“To think this may be war,” she exclaimed. “How 
often around the dinner tables of England this war 
has been discussed. I know it all. The increase of 
the German fleet. The growth of pacifism in Eng- 
land in the second half of the last century — how 
intolerant Granny was of that. Germany’s policy of 
“world” power, or downfall, and England’s political 
genius for colonization. And now — O Gabriele, 
think of the excitement at home.” 

“Germany’s field glasses are up.” 

“Go on,” she said sharply, “tell me what you 
know.” 

“I do not know the text of the Austrian note, but 
I hardly think Austrian demands will be moderate. 
Serbia’s answer might be favorable, but I believe 
Germany has chosen this time. Her scouts have 
been busy. She thinks England on the verge of civil 
war. The Khedive is conspiring with Kitchener’s 
enemies in Egypt. The time is ripe for Germany. 
She has sown black seeds on the Nile. Why even 
Canada ” he began sarcastically. 

“Why do you say ‘even Canada’? Canada is 
loyal ” Margherita exclaimed indignantly. 

“And yet the people of Canada have refused to 
be led into the adventure of building ships. They 
will build for local purposes, but not for world uses. 
If this is war — they are too late. Germany knows 
all this.” 

“No one believes a diplomat. Why do you tell 
me these disgusting things? I am sure it is just a 
formula to augment the grandeur of your office, I 


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123 


don’t believe it, I don’t believe it. But, oh! — I 
wish I were in England. Why should the world go 
to war for the murder of the Archduke Franz?” 

“It is the excuse of a dreamer with a paralyzed 
arm. Restless and exuberant William of Prussia 
waits, a dreamer of material things ” 

“Go on, I am listening.” 

“There is no initiative in a German Parliament. 
The Crown appoints and dismisses the ministers. 
The legislative policy is that of the Kaiser. The 
Chancellor is the mouthpiece of the Kaiser.” Gabri- 
ele stopped. He had never seen his wife’s face so 
dark and severe. 

He felt how idle and useless a trying to come near 
each other on national grounds must be. They 
thought so differently. 

“Stop kicking my chair,” she said, “it gets on my 
nerves.” 

“You are always like that,” he said coldly, “when 
I speak of England.” Margherita looked at him, 
his face looked as though again he lived only in his 
official duties. 

“Tell me,” she flung the question at him. “Do 
you see no way out?” 

“To me there is but one chance that the war will 
pass,” he replied. Margherita shook off the rug and 
stood up. 

“What is that?” 

“Hush,” he said, “someone is coming.” 

He waited until a fellow traveler pacing the deck 
was out of earshot, then he continued in a whisper — 


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“The Kaiser is still on his Norwegian cruise. If he 
returns to Berlin, all hope of evasion is gone.” 

3|C >|« Sts ♦ * 

Behind the tea table in the oak hall at Foto, Lady 
Hopetoune sat alone. She was awaiting the train 
from town and the return of her grandson Fitz- 
maurice. Her old hands fluttered without ceasing 
among the cups, but she had quite forgotten to pour 
out her tea. Twice she had taken up the sugar tongs 
and twice she had put them down. The invisible 
door in the oak paneling into the butler’s pantry 
swung open and Sampson came in. He, too, seemed 
agitated. His black tie had worked round his collar 
under his ear and in his hand, forgetful of all 
precedent, he carried a table napkin. 

“Beg pardon, milady,” he said, “the first footman x 
is just back from Marl Hill. He says he hears the 
Austrian note is a very provoking document. Least- 
ways that is the news Captain Rumbold brought back 
from town.” 

Lady Hopetoune looked at her old butler. She • 
saw the table napkin, the misplaced tie, and with a 
little tilting of her chin she composed herself and 
quietly poured out her tea. Like a rare instrument 
which has long responded to the power of control, 
her voice, tremulous at first, steadied down. 

“I think, Sampson,” she said, “we must not allow 
ourselves to become excited. Sir Edward Grey has 
said he would probably have to take time to consider 
the note and, diplomatically, one has great confidence 


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125 


in Sir Edward Grey.” Sampson still stood shifting 
his weight uneasily from one foot to the other. 

“His young Lordship will have the latest news 
when he comes,” he said. 

Lady Hopetoune took a piece of toast, but she 
quickly put it down again. 

“I think I hear the wheels of the dog-cart now, 
Sampson,” she said. 

Fitzmaurice entered. He went up to his grand- 
mother. 

Lady Hopetoune leaned back in her chair and 
turned her wrinkled cheek. And when he had kissed 
her, Fitzmaurice patted her shoulder gently twice. 

She looked up inquiringly. Fitzmaurice was 
never demonstrative — “My dear boy,” she said. 

“There is no definite news. Granny. Sir Edward 
Grey saw the French Ambassador this morning and 
the German Ambassador this afternoon. To both 
he is reported to have said — ‘The only chance of 
mediation lay in common action by Germany, France, 
Italy and Great Britain.’ No one dare hope, though, 
that Germany will co-operate,” he added. Still Fitz- 
maurice stood by her side. Again Lady Hopetoune 
looked at him inquiringly. 

“You must let me give you some tea, my darling,” 
she said gently. 

jK * * 

On a ferry crossing the lower St. Lawrence, 
Dante and Payton were returning from a fishing trip. 
It was Sunday, the second of August in the year 
1914. In the churches throughout the British Em- 


126 


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pire, people had been praying that peace might still 
be preserved. No words could exaggerate the per- 
turbation that disturbed the hearts of all people. ' On 
July the 29th, Sir Edward Grey had given warning 
to Prince Lichnowsky in general terms that if France 
and Germany were engaged events might draw in 
England, and at that moment the German Chancel- 
lor was making his “infamous” proposal to Sir 
Edward Goschen. A proposal intended to bind the 
English people to neutrality on most degrading 
terms. Italy was being kept in the dark by her 
Allies. And Belgium, the crux upon which the war 
turned — on August the 2d the Belgian people saw 
themselves faced by a grave danger. 

With distance, impressions dwindle, but looking 
back across the years, eachman will remember in part 
the passion that arose in those days in his own soul. 
There is something drowsy in ordinary life, an 
animal content, which comes over the collective mind 
and takes away the action and the excitement that in 
great moments waylay it. In a twinkling in those 
last days of July, 1914, the simplicity, the drowsiness 
of life was gone, and the day dream was swept away. 
A jar had come to the quiet senses of too perfect 
skies. In a twinkling the relaxed nerves were taut 
and the passion that lies curled asleep upon the door- 
step of each man’s soul was awake and w^atchful. 
Wherever you went there was apprehension. Where- 
ever you went there was anxiety, and an anxiety not 
for personal fortune, or personal affection, but 
anxiety that had sprung like a beautiful illusion at 


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127 


the whip of patriotism. As we look back across the 
breathless years that followed those first days, the 
image that remains with greatest clearness is the 
splash of the oar of patriotism upon the sea of 
national life. 

A new, fierce beauty came to many in those days. 
A new quality in the sensation of existence. Later, 
perhaps, it changed color and sunk into the shadow 
and the dark outline, but in those first anxious days, 
patriotism was like a piece of very highly polished 
silver. 

On the night of the second of August, on the ferry 
crossing the St. Lawrence the minds of Payton and 
Dante were caught by the majesty of the times. Near 
the coast the sea-gulls settled on the water, flapped 
their wings and circled in the air and then again 
settled on the swell of the tide. And as the pattern 
of the coast grew dim and the glow of the sunset was 
left behind in midstream to the vibration of the 
engine ran the current of each man’s thought, pene- 
trating the emptiness of drowsy life. 

Following the image of patriotism came a lyrical 
quality in the design of existence, that man might 
come by the new turmoil to his feet. A new illusion 
was entering into the decoration of life, an undu- 
latory motion like the presaging of a great storm. 

Dante and Payton together watched the gulls. 

“Payton,” said Dante. “Isn’t it wonderful that 
through the chance of a royal inspection, England’s 
fleet is concentrated and of full strength.” 

“Nipper,” Payton replied, “lay it to your young 


128 


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soul that these are the most exciting times that any 
man has ever lived in — this is the world’s great 
adventure. If it comes, it will change everything 
and everybody.” 

Dante looked over the smooth water, they were 
nearing the southern coast. 

“By God, Payton,” he whispered, “will you go?” 

“Why not?” Payton asked. 

On the train they found Wickfield. He rushed 
up to them in an excited manner. He had been 
spending a few days with his wife and child in an 
out-of-the-way place. Newspapers were uncertain. 
Suddenly it had come over him, that he had got to 
get back to town. He stood mopping his face with 
his pocket handkerchief. 

“I’d got to get back, where I can hear,” he said. 
“I’d got to get back where I can hear.” 

At last, for the first time, they realized Wickfield. 

Dante considered. “Have you any English blood, 
Wickfield?” he asked at last. 

“My mother was from Lancashire,” Wickfield 
answered. 

In the smoking room was a Captain Lawrence 
going up to report to the war office. Payton said 
something to him. Dante heard his answer. 

“It’s the big war,” at last. “I am sailing by the 
first ship. Going to Ontario first to say good-by to 
my old mother, but I go on board Thursday at the 
latest. I am afraid I may not be there in time.” 

“You mean it may be over?” 

“Yes, it will be over in three months.” 


THE NEW WORLD 129 

Payton interrupted — “How long did Kitchener 
say?” 

“I believe he said three years,” Captain Lawrence 
answered, “but Kitchener is an alarmist.” 

At the wayside stations they alighted to see if the 
station master had any news to give a new aspect, 
but they could get no news, nothing to allay that 
perilous shiver of excitement that with them all per- 
sisted. 

And as one is apt to condemn conditions which are 
unsatisfying, they condemned the lack of available 
news, feeling that there must be news and not know- 
ing that the events of August the 3d were not yet 
taken place. 

It was on August the 3d that Sir Edward Grey 
went to tell the House of Commons how he had 
played his part. It was on August the 3d that the 
lights suddenly shone out at last through the cur- 
tained windows, that the House waited breathlessly, 
strained to hear the conditions, the events, the war 
negotiations outlined by the Foreign Minister. Those 
who were not present may picture him, calm, inscru- 
table, his face bearing traces of anxiety. And those 
who were not present can imagine him sketching the 
history of England’s relations with France — the 
question of Belgium — the suggestion, the insulting 
suggestion that England should stand aside and hus- 
band her strength, and as they picture that English 
Statesman standing before the representatives of 
England’s people, they will hear again the roar, the 
storm of pent-up emotion which, at the end of his 
address, swept the House. 


CHAPTER XVII 


O pposite Payton at the breakfast table of a 
hotel sat Dante. It was the morning of the 
3d of August, the day the vanguard of the 
German armies was over the Belgian frontier. Dante 
and Payton had been traveling all night, sleeping in 
their clothes, so that they might get out at every 
stopping place and ask for news. Dante was still in 
his tweeds and flannel shirt, his hair but hastily 
brushed. With all the predominance of machinery in 
our modern life, it very often happens that the morn- 
ing of one’s hasty toilet is the morning of one’s most 
adventurous meeting and the feelings of love and 
hope are greatly modified by one’s clothes. 

Dante gave his order to the waiter, spread his 
table napkin over his knees, and ran his hand quickly 
over his hair, a habit he had when he was excited, 
and looked up. 

Suddenly he saw Margherita. And as he sat 
looking at her a sensation that most men feel once 
in their lives, took possession of him. It was a sen- 
sation of yearning. He felt again as the trees must 
feel when the sap rises at the caress of the spring 
wind. It was as if all the blood receded from his 
heart, and then after a moment flowed back again, 
carrying with it a new power, a new certainty that 


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whatever in life he had lacked, whatever in life he 
might yet lack, what he had waited for all his life 
was to see Margherita sitting at breakfast with her 
husband and Father Morot. In a moment, self- 
forgetfulness was gone and he remembered his 
tweeds and his flannel shirt. Worse than all, he had 
not shaved, but even so, he could not let himself be 
unnoticed, he had come into contact with a force too 
strong for him. Under her picture hat he saw Mar- 
gherita’s large dark eyes and he got up from his 
chair and went to her as a needle goes to a strong 
magnet. 

In the first days of threatened and accomplished 
war, the emotions of men and women came very near 
to the surface. Perhaps it was her emotion about the 
war that gave to Margherita’s hand a longer and a 
warmer clasp. It was as if in their subconsciousness 
women and men glimpsed the lean moments ahead, 
the days of separation and of waiting and with the 
Germans barely over the Belgian frontier, they came 
from their conventional impassivity. At any rate, 
what happened was, that with that hand clasp, 
Dante touched the sparkle of the stars. What 
brought him back was Father Morot peeping at him 
over his glasses. 

“I don’t think you know my husband, Mr. Ricci.” 
It was Margherita’s voice. A silence, as Dante 
turned to the tall Italian. Thin, he was, with high 
shoulders and little dark eyes, with no lashes, but 
there was distinction in his bearing. 

Suddenly Dante heard his own voice saying. ‘WV’ill 


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you be here some time? You must let me show you 
about.” 

Margherita’s husband answered: “I am going to 
Washington, but my wife stays here.” 

Behind him, Father Morot spoke: 

“How is Canada, Ricci?” 

With a queer little smile Dante looked at Mar- 
gherita. 

“Canada is coming alive,” he answered. 

And looking at her, Dante saw her eyelid quiver. 
She understood he meant she had something to do 
with Canada’s renaissance. He knew himself very 
awkward, but in the still, deep pool of her eyes had 
been a flicker, Margherita understood. 

Monsieur I’Abbe Morot, with a slight frown on 
his face, watched that stolen look of understanding. 
He caressed his chin. 

“Still an idealist?” he said. “Your idealism has 
outlived my prophecy, but you will adjust yourself to 
the forces of human life.” He continued caressing 
his chin. 

At that moment Dante hated him. It was as if 
across a vision of mountain flowers and shadowy 
green, someone had suddenly dropped a dark curtain. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


I N quite an able book on sociology, the author 
remarks, “If you know the ideal of a man you 
have obtained the true key to his nature.” And 
he goes on to say that if you know what kind of 
men, or life, what qualities, what position seem to 
him most desirable, you have got his drift, as it were, 
you know him through and through. There have 
been and are instances of men not fully recoghizing 
their own ideals, for conventionalities of society 
oblige them to show a preference in accordance with 
their surroundings. It is because a man does not 
recognize himself, or because he is afraid of conven- 
tionality that ninety per cent of the workers of the 
world are committed to one kind of toil, when they 
would infinitely prefer another. 

It was not that Dante did not know himself, it was 
the conventionality of society that kept him in the 
Pulp Company. He had a good income, a recog- 
nized position, both of which he feared to give up. 
In his romantic spirit he knew Margherita belonged 
to the world which was well housed and well dressed 
and he did not know that Margherita would care for 
the refreshment of the human spirit by fine art. He did 
not know if he gave up everything to try to bring about 
a masterpiece whether perhaps she might not think 


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him merely eccentric. And he forgot that his chance 
of doing is here. At least he tried to forget it, but 
where an idea has taken root in the mind, though one 
may disregard it, it sometimes is strong and im- 
perious enough to spoil even one’s triumphs. It is 
as if the pivot and pole of life were at a wrong angle. 
Following the soul backwards and forwards through 
life, how seldom is found one with a single purpose 
bold enough to conceive a great end and streng 
enough to try to carry through. 

“What am I going to do?” said Giovanni, and true 
to his precedent, did nothing. 

“My mind is more keen to philosophical imagin- 
ings than the minds of other men, I must make my 
mark in literature,” said Dante, but overspread by 
the sage issue, he stayed on in the Pulp Company. 
He knew that his life was not falling in with his 
ideals, but he had a romantic strain in him inherited 
not from the practical Helena, but the wayward 
Giovanni, and Margherita touched that strain and 
in a wordly way, he wanted to measure up to her 
standards. 

Dante had a letter in September from old John 
Dowden. John was coming to the East, he was 
going to France, but he was bringing to the East his 
wife and child. “Happiness is love,” wrote old 
John. 

“Love,” Dante repeated slowly to himself, and 
with the letter in his hand, fell to thinking of old 
John. 

John Dowden was a man with a very modest idea 


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of himself. This affected his attitude to his wife. 
He never quite understood how he had been lucky 
enough to win her. Her capture had always seemed 
to him like a boy with a butterfly net, who suddenly 
in his race across the meadow, finds that he has 
caught a rare moth with gorgeous wings. She was 
pretty and modern, and he was an accidental in- 
truder. 

In the year of the outbreak of war, the two key- 
notes of John’s life were the love he had for his little 
light, modern wife and the love he had for the work 
that he intended to do. But before he had arrived at 
such a concise view of himself, he had traveled since 
Haileybury days along a somewhat thorny road. 
When he left Haileybury, the process of charging his 
life was not clear. A somewhat important factor in 
a young man’s start are the means to facilitate that 
start. 

At the same time that Dante was passing into 
Oxford, John discovered that although his mother 
intended to send him to college, she could really not 
afford it, and the fact was that if John went to 
college, his mother would have to retrench yet 
further. John considered this. It was the first 
psychological struggle of his existence. The battle 
between his duty and his dream. The first was his 
duty to his mother. The second was what he desired 
and needed to fit him for the life he would have 
chosen. They fought in John’s soul and duty won. 
John was to come at life without much preliminary. 

“It’s not much of a sacrifice. Mater,” he said. 


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136 

Mrs. Dowden had smiled and shaken her head 
dubiously. Then she sought comfort from the facto- 
tum in the kitchen. 

She, between the splashes of water at the washtub, 
had vouchsafed that “some marries with a red carpet 
and some marries without.” A maxim that, being 
gifted with an Irish imagination, strangely helped 
Mrs. Dowden. It foreboded that John would attain 
his end in any event. 

An awakened conscience, and John was through 
with his dream. Pursuant to this resolution, he left 
for the West. The West was young. It was barely 
entering on its moment of expansion. John was 
young. He exaggerated the level to which he must 
fall. He took a position as salesman in a western 
village shop. He measured out baby-ribbon over the 
counter. He grew hot over the shadings of pink, 
salmon and rose. The infinitesimal difference of 
shade defied him. Forty — fifty — sixty. He sold 
thread. Sold it with the anxiety to please that a 
village shop demands. He was promoted from the 
“findings” to the dress materials. And the brain 
John had expected to turn on a fine point of law, he 
used in his lavish extolling of woolens; an interest 
that began in woolens, but passed ultimately to the 
purchaser. His enthusiasm served him in good 
stead, it attracted a ranchman buying garments for 
his wife, who took him back to Nelson, and made 
him manager of a small shop. John made a little 
money in a mining claim, invested it in the Carney 
Block, and his career was begun. 


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It was then when life was an Inexhaustible reper- 
tory of little opportunities that Felicity came to 
Nelson to summer on Lake Kootenay. John was 
interested in the Silver King mine smelters. He was 
enthusiastic and impressed Felicity. Felicity had just 
returned from her school in the East with a little 
scornful smile on her lips. “Humbug and new- 
fangled ideas,” her mother called Felicity’s formula, 
but Felicity called it “smart.” Nothing rustic or 
countrified pleased her. She began with John by 
making fun of Nelson, but her brown eyes had such 
bright golden flecks and her nose turned up so 
engagingly, and her hair grew so prettily on her 
forehead, that John felt if “smartness meant any- 
thing to her, it must certainly mean something to 
him.” So he worked very hard to make himself 
more solid in Felicity’s outlook. 

All that autumn the youth In him turned to the 
youth In her; and when the partridges whirred up 
John was not thinking of his mother; he was thinking 
of irresponsibility and laughter and Felicity’s absurd 
nose. 

“Mr. Dowdy,” she called him and clapped her 
hands and ran away, and, aware of the beauty of the 
lips that mocked him, John pursued. John said how 
he had caught her. He never realized that If the 
secret were known, she had caught him. The simple 
joyousness of his disposition responded to Felicity’s 
brightness and he had no sense of anything lacking. 
He was marvelously content with his home. 

Felicity, his butterfly, speaking the magic of sense- 


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less things, flitted about. Felicity was happiness 
supreme. And Felicity’s little girl was her replica. 
The same nose, the same wave of hair, the same 
bubbling, irrresponsible laughter, but she had John’s 
eyes. When at the outbreak of war his little girl 
was three, and John Dowden took his wife and child 
to the East, John’s mother thanked God that at least 
the baby had John’s eyes. 

The symbol of the war to John was the sacking 
of Belgian homes. This idea gripped him. There 
was a moment when it came like a thunderclap to 
him, that if he, John Dowden, had happened to live 
in Belgium this headlong pace might have borne 
down Felicity and Pansy — he called his little girl 
Pansy. Just for a moment when he realized this — 
everything went black — “What if it had been his 
wife and his child?” 

On the day that the Germans bombarded Rheims 
Cathedral, September 20th, 1914, John started for 
Eastern Canada. For the second time in his life, he 
gave up his own happiness ; this time he went to fight 
the armies set in motion by a white-cloaked figure, 
that was rushing from outpost to outpost in an auto- 
mobile. 


CHAPTER XIX 


D ANTE’S walks ranged far and wide that 
autumn, and on them he would be thinking, 
thinking, thinking. 

At one time, he would be thinking of the big war 
and the sweep to the Marne and of how he must go 
and at another he would be thinking of Margherita 
and some word or some phrase or some gesture of 
hers. He was not blind to the fact that was so close 
to all the world, that every young man must go. 

On August the 12th and 13th, the bulk of the 
British Expeditionary Force had crossed the channel. 
The flower of the youth of England went out by 
Southampton’s dock to darkness and mystery, leav- 
ing but the legend of the great valor of the British 
Expeditionary Force. Early in August, Kitchener 
had called for half a million fresh volunteers for the 
war, and early in October he had got them. Still 
unsatisfied, he called for yet another half million, 
and before Christmas his numbers were again com- 
plete. 

Canada was to send thirty thousand men and a 
promise of more. On his wide walks Dante pon- 
dered on these things. He was no coward. He was 
no mushy lover of pleasure. A hundred times at 
home with his mother, at Haileybury, even at 


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Oxford, he had not been in love with life, why then, 
wasn’t he dressed in khaki, learning his drill? 

A voice whispered . . . “Margherita.” Her 
coming had seemed the greatest event in the world, 
and now that she had come he must outstay her stay. 
After that the world that divined cowardice in him 
would know, he would show them. He would go 
over with some marching column into the fight. 

And Dante’s plans to stay were helped by Mar- 
gherita. She relied on him to bring her news. Her 
husband was still in Washington, but expecting daily 
to be sent back to Canada and she had taken a fur- 
nished house for the winter. 

One of the first to enlist was Fitzmaurice. He 
sent a large photograph of himself in a calvary uni- 
form, that Margherita put in her drawing room. 
Dante saw it when he went there to tea. In this 
topsy-turvy, unguessed world, Fitzmaurice was sure 
to do the right thing. The world was in a spin. 
The best men would come to the top, the gay, brave 
men who played boldly with no eye on the box office, 
but just yet, Dante could not leave — he could not 
leave. 

He would lie and fret in his bed in the morning, 
until he glanced over his shoulder to discover Payton 
looking at him. 

“Oh damn!” cried Payton, and punched his head 
seeing the Nipper side-slip. And then Dante turned 
over on his side and dropped on the pillow, and Pay- 
ton blazed away at him for his lazy habits. Dante’s 


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141 

face was a mask and Payton’s face was a mask to 
cover, in each case, what went on behind it. 

These moods came and passed again. They both 
had a fair idea of the relative dignity of the indi- 
vidual man. That was their strength that on the 
common subject of enlisting each treated it always as 
quite removed from the other, but Dante had an ink- 
ling that Payton knew far more of his mental life 
than he knew of Payton’s. They were neither of 
them just the ordinary male animal. To Dante sex 
was beautiful and solemn and — attractive. To Pay- 
ton it was something to be shunned, but the ordinary 
male animal neither shuns it nor is awed by it, he 
hungers, and if the gods smile, his hunger is allayed. 

Dante and Payton looked for a conclusive solution 
and found none and were, for the most part, like two 
forces, each waiting for the other to make the first 
move. 

But behind all the “rot” they talked, there drifted 
steadily across each man’s mind the war — the war 
and the problems of the war. Distressed Dante was 
with this inward battle of his. He imaged the grim- 
ness of England’s position — the hordes of Huns and 
the valorous British force and he wanted war, but in 
the scale of his mind over against it was the only 
great attraction he had felt in his life. 

The fever of these two thoughts was unslacking 
in him, he had no peace. Two tyrannies took posses- 
sion of him, the tyranny of patriotism and the 
tyranny of the senses. With him as with some men, 
he could not adapt himself to one and then pass on 


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to the other. He might concentrate on war, but in 
this love he had no rights, when he returned, Mar- 
gherita would be gone. He heard again Lady 
Hopetoune’s musical voice saying to him, “Mr. 
Ricci, the morning train leaves at seven, I hope it 
will not be too early.” And he realized that in the 
world where Margherita moved, with just such a 
trivial sentence, he might again be put beyond her 
pale. No, fate had thrown Margherita across his 
path — he could not go. He might go to the war 
some day, perhaps, when Margherita had gone. 

Yet in spite of his slacking, love of England' was 
a thing to Dante of flesh and bone, it had been bred 
in him, in the tin soldier battles he held with his 
father on the nursery floor. 

“Danny,” his father said, “who won the battle of 
Crecy?” Dante’s tongue shot through the space 
where his second teeth would come, as he racked his 
brain. And then triumphantly he lisped — “The 
British archers. Father, the British archers.” 

Dante had loved England since he was six years 
old — taught by his father, who, in his turn, had 
learned it from his English mother. 

The thoughts of one’s mature years are often 
seedlings sown in youth, and the milestones which 
pale for a time like untrimmed lamps along the 
length of life, are once more lighted again. 

A pale light across which a blind had been 
stealthily drawn for a long time suddenly shone out 
again for Dante. It was the milestone of his father’s 


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143 

last message. “A gentleman never fails to meet his 
obligations.” 

It was pathos, it ought to have softened him, but 
he met it with bravado, and his heart grew hard. 
With an effort he thrust it from him. 

As he sat possessed by thoughts, he looked at Pay- 
ton reading the evening news of the war, and he took 
his hat and stole down out into the air. He walked 
doggedly to reassure himself. Did it matter what 
people thought of him? The powers of circum- 
stances were playing fast and loose with him. Why 
couldn’t Margherita have been free ? Life was after 
him with a halter. The tradition was war, and a 
smashing of the light objects of his existence. Not 
this time. He jerked his hat over his eyes. Quiver- 
ing through the night came a thought full of irresist- 
ible emotion. It burst forth in him. He had 
watched and he was sure that Margherita was not 
happy. 

It was at this time that Dante began to feel the 
pitifulness of life and he began to see it, not trackless 
as he had supposed, but on the contrary a wilderness 
of tracks crossing and intercrossing like the mesh of 
a very fine net. And he glimpsed that many men 
never arrive at a very definite end, not because they 
have no road to follow, but because they have many, 
and because one road leads a little in one direction 
and another road leads in the opposite direction, 
and so the latitude and longitude remain the same. 

He had but lately assumed a slight relationship 
with a young French Canadian, attracted to him by 


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his love of literature. At first glance young du 
Plessis was not only an attractive phantom in Dante’s 
own creation, but really a young man of some super- 
ficial presence. To begin with he had good looks of 
a sun dark variety and with them he carried a con- 
fusion of material suitable for light conversation. 
He had an anticipatory idea of art. With an un- 
canny adroitness he picked a writer from obscurity, 
just before he became generally known. And having 
partly by chance attained an ascendency of opinion 
among his friends, amongst his friends, at least, he 
managed to maintain it. 

But there was another reason Dante was attracted 
by him, and that reason was that young, strong, 
intelligent, and, seemingly at least, politically public 
spirited, du Plessis was not wearing khaki and made 
no move to go to the war. 

In Dante’s new phase of psychological struggle 
one reason only could be applicable in such a case. 
Du Plessis must have some strong and secret reason. 
Dante set about to penetrate du Plessis’ reserve and 
find the reason. 

Du Plessis was most companionable. Desire and 
imagination and an expansive horizon seemed to be 
opened up by him. He had a real love of French 
literature. He knew just where one influence ended 
and another was begun. He had a real love of the 
French language, and he classified French prose as 
the vehicle of perfect art, but in time, Dante dis- 
covered that this love of French things did not fall 


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upon France itself, that was his first inkling of 
Du Plessis. 

One evening as they walked, unlike himself and 
drawn out by this friend who seemed to be straying 
as he was straying, Dante became personal and in 
that certain mood he spoke of London and of how 
London persisted in the life of every man of British 
descent, and he described how when he, a colonial, 
first walked along London’s streets, he had the feel- 
ing of a sojourner who has returned at last from a 
far country, and then he went on to say that in the 
immensity of the feeling that he had come home, he 
had stretched out his hand to touch the stones of 
Westminster Abbey. 

Then, self conscious that he had already come out 
of himself too far, Dante waited for Du Plessis, the 
Frenchman, to say the same thing about Paris. 

When at last Du Plessis answered it was to 
remark that what he really liked in Paris was the art 
— and — Du Plessis gave a short laugh — the atmos- 
phere — Dante had been at great pains to find out 
why Du Plessis did not go to fight with the Tricolor, 
but after this conversation it was not long before 
Dante was prepared to admit that fundamentally 
Du Plessis had no reason, but to guard the rounded 
curves of his own life from being chipped by a chance 
bullet. And in front of this trivial outlook Du 
Plessis’ knowledge of art became meager and a trifle 
dwarfed and the garlands of his imagination took on 
the appearance of garlands when the ribbons have 
lost their freshness and the flowers are faded like 


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wreaths upon a monument when the day of celebra- 
tion is past. 

What had been immense became mean and a little 
trivial against the clear sky of the sacrifice of more 
simple men. 


CHAPTER XX 


I N the days of Napoleonic wars the battles were 
a violent conflagration which blazed and soon 
were over. The losses were enormous. But in 
the early days of war in Flanders, the battle was 
more in the nature of a smolder which broke out here 
or there into flame. The last of October of 1914 
saw perilous days in the green meadows, where Eng- 
land and Germany fought for the mastery. The 
woods broke into glorious autumn tints and past 
their glowing foliage went the Belgians, weary and 
battered, but with an unbroken spirit. The Germans 
were trying hard to take Ypres, and it is said that 
if they had been able to push home their attack once 
again, they would have succeeded. At Ypres were 
Sir John French and his lieutenant, Douglas Haig. 
For the first battle of Ypres, that name which will 
always be so poignant to Canada, was fought in the 
end of October, 1914, and the last three days of 
that month were days of great darkness for the 
British Army, though when the fateful November 
first had come, the British line was still intact. 

To the north and east the Germans were known 
to be gathering for one grand final dash to Calais. 
Later, documents were found upon the dead to show 
that the Emperor had given orders to break the line 


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148 

at any cost. Those were the days when the Prussians 
made their advance in a close formation, and it was 
on November the iith that the Germans launched 
the attack that was their high water mark before the 
winter lull. 

On November the 15th, within earshot of the 
guns, Lord Roberts died. After that, the continua- 
tion of active operations was hampered by the 
weather. Rain-storms, frost-bites and muddy, 
weary men, sometimes only fifty yards from the 
enemy, shivering in their trenches. 

In England on every common the soldier citizens 
were taking up the burden of the war and making 
themselves into “Territorials” and the new armies. 

The idea that the defaulting of Dante was just a 
little delaying of duty had by this time become fixed 
in Payton’s mind. So it became Payton’s systematic 
intention to wait and let the war itself take hold of 
him, but when he had become fairly conclusive that 
the distant patriotism in Dante would force his hand, 
there came to him in the person of Father Morot, an 
imputation of the real point at issue. 

It was one evening at the end of December after 
dinner, when Payton was sitting with the evening 
paper over the fire. He put down the evening paper 
and blew into the bowl of his pipe, as the peasants 
blow upon the peats, until redness came. And hav- 
ing done this, he looked into the fire and the sound of 
the wind in the chimney was doleful like the sound of 
the wind going among the dunes from the sea. And 
as he sat the scorch from the fire girt him and 


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149 


brought to his mind the scorch of battle and the men 
who went prematurely to meet their “cosmic truth.” 
For that was Payton’s idea of God, that He was but 
“cosmic truth.” Symbolic, it was to him, of the 
tributory and contributory influences of life. 

Pagan he was, out and out, flesh and bone, but 
sometimes among the innumerable calculations that 
he made, there filtered a slender doubt that it might 
be that where his belief took hold was not the place 
where his heart longed to be. Head-knowledge he 
had, not heart-knowledge. There was no inspiration 
in his religion, only a strange arrogance that would 
abide with him until his passing, and because on that 
dark night the beauty of life seemed so worthless to 
him, his heart was like a sinking boat that Dante did 
not go. 

In the rich brown atmosphere of his library. Pay- 
ton sat in a deep leather-covered sofa before the 
fire. The room was luxuriantly furnished. On the 
walls were paintings from one or two of the best 
Canadian painters. A view of the Thames at night 
by Morrice. A snow scene of Horatio Walker. In 
the book cases were rare editions picked up in New 
York at the Anderson Galleries, yet Payton had 
never cared for this room. Only once in his life had 
Payton ever cared for anything, that was at Hailey- 
bury, when Dante first “cottoned” to him, and the 
“Nipper” had that sensitive, sharp line about his 
chin. Lately it seemed Dante liked what he could do 
for him more than he himself. 

Payton’s man servant came in. He was slim and 


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150 

silent, it being part of his contract that he never 
spoke unless he was spoken to. Maxwell walked 
around the sofa and stood, Payton held out his hand. 

Maxwell lowered the tray to a convenient angle. 

Payton took up the card. 

“Very well,” he said, “you may show him in.” 

“Very good, sir,” said Maxwell. 

‘'‘My permission did not need an answer.” 

Maxwell stood just inside the door and bowed. 
He knew his pay was just twice the sum of any con- 
fidential man servant in town. 

In a moment the rings of the brown velvet curtain 
rattled on the brass pole and Father Morot entered. 

A musical voice said 

“I came to call upon young Ricci. You are Mr. 
Payton ” Father Morot did not finish his sen- 

tence. “When I heard he was out, I thought I might 
have the pleasure ” 

Payton considered his guest. He knew quite well 
Father Morot had sought an interview with him. 
Payton knew very well indeed the tones of subter- 
fuge. Father Morot’s arresting voice did not pierce 
to his pagan heart. 

“Well, well ” said Father Morot, sitting 

down unasked before the fire. “Young men will be 
young men. I suppose now young Ricci is out at a 
dance, or some such thing?” 

“Have a cigar?” said Payton taking the cover off 
a round glass bowl. “I have just been reading the 
evening paper.” 

“I don’t mind if I do,” said Father Morot. “A 


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151 

man must have some relaxation and we priests — you 
know — we are denied the main thing.” 

Payton chose not to understand his innuendo. 

“Cut the end,” he said, “it draws better.” In- 
stinctively Payton went back to the war as the safe 
subject. 

“Curious,” he said, “this fraternization on Christ- 
mas day between the English and German soldiers.” 

“Yes,” said Father Morot. “It is the Saxon wor- 
ship of the Christmas tree. It is also Anglo-Saxon, 
and a habit which is anterior to Christianity.” 

“But it is amazing,” said Payton — “these men 
take each other by the throat, and in a minute they 
stop. They are friends. They play games together.” 

Father Morot blew a cloud of smoke. 

“They are not friends, they are diametrically 
opposed,” he said slowly. “The German methods 
are right, but the German purpose is wrong. The 
English purpose is right, but the English methods 
are wrong.” 

“But Belgium,” interrupted Payton. 

“I speak in general terms, time will prove that I 

am correct. But ” Father Morot rolled his 

cigar between his finger and thumb, “it was not to 
speak about the war that I have forced my way Into 
Mr. Payton’s most charming surroundings ” 

“Nowadays,” said Payton, “men are not so con- 
ventional, they go to each other’s houses on a very 
slight acquaintance. The world has become quite 
tolerant.” 


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“I am not so sure,” said Father Morot — “That 
is precisely why I am here ” 

Payton decided to leave the lead in his opponent’s 
hand. 

“Ah,” he said. 

“New movements are abroad,” said Father 
Morot, “but up to the present moment old standards 
of criticism prevail. Take for example the question 
upon which my church is so severe, the question of 
divorce. It is withythe movement of modern times 
more and more easy to procure, but in the back of 
each man’s mind, he makes a reserve — a tiny mark. 
The divorce is never forgotten.” 

“Well,” said Payton as Father Morot paused to 
take breath. On one occasion at Haileybury, he had 
discovered a newcomer pulling the legs off a fly with 
a pair of tweezers. At this moment Payton felt like 
the fly. 

He knew where the Abbe was heading and he 
knew that he would not leave him one leg to stand 
on. He wondered if anything had happened to focus 
opinion, or whether it was as he put it himself, “just 
the priest meddling.” It was a rankling encounter 
for Payton because he did not have the initiative. In 
his own violent arguments, he always took the lead, 
but here he must be wary. 

“I am afraid,” the Abbe was saying, “divorce may 
be interesting to you if young Ricci continues his very 
marked attentions in a certain direction.” 

A chill smile played around Payton’s mouth. As 
it happened perhaps he had better not feign igno- 


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ranee. Father Morot had perhaps come on behalf 
of the lady. Sitting on the edge of his chair Payton 
said: 

“I suppose she is one of those hard-riding English- 
women. The kind that must have some man hanging 
about. If she is getting talked about, she had better 
be more careful, that is all.” 

“That is not all. Borghese will not allow his 
name to be dragged in the mire.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Her husband. He is an Italian, and he has not 
been always faithful. An unfaithful husband does not 
allow the same digression to his wife. He knows 
that point of view too well.” 

“Why argue about it?” said Payton. “From what 
I hear I would say almost that if such a psychological 
phenomenon exists, she is a good woman.” 

Then for the first time in the interview. Father 
Morot put forth the influence that came to him from 
his emotion and belief. His voice which had been 
hard, softened and took a lower key. 

“Ah, then, Mr. Payton, you will recognize that 
when a bad woman falls, she looks into her con- 
science and finds forgiveness and having a precedent, 
she picks herself up, brushes away the dust and con- 
tinues on her path, but — when a good woman falls, 
she finds no forgiveness, she has no precedent. To 
fall, for a good woman, means ruin.” 

The eyes of the two men met. 

“Then you think she is good?” said Payton, 


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clenching his fingers so hard that the cigar he had 
just taken broke In two. 

“Unfortunately,’^ Father Morot nodded. “How 
can she adjust herself ? She has no precedent and they 
are both starved. The Instinct of self-forgetfulness 
is with them now, but the hungry seek bread.” 

“Yesterday, I took a walk on the mountain. I 
saw them meet. I saw the long clasp of their hands 
— and I was alarmed. I know Margherita. I have 
known her since a child. Her nature Is compounded 
of the Celtic and the Latin. Her grandmother always 
speaks of her as ‘my Italian granddaughter.’ For 
such a woman there should be marriage combined 
with love, or else — the vocation of a nun.” 

Payton’s mind was divided. 

“I have come,” said Father Morot, raising his 
hand to his brow, “to say that young Ricci must be 
forced to go to the great war. You must Influence 
him.” 

The priest stood up. He seemed pervaded by a 
strong force. His words came as if they were an 
interpretation of a message. His arresting voice 
compelled Payton’s interest. 

“It is the vocation of strong souls to save the 
weaker,” he said, and quick to see Payton recoil at 
this specializing, at this too-patent wisdom of the 
church, the Abbe came himself to the Pagan level. 

“Mr. Payton,” he hesitated, as if something were 
being involuntarily drawn from him. “I am a priest, 
but I believe that life is a thing of flesh and blood.” 

It was the echo that all men are woven in one loom 


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155 

— Payton was not subdued by the priest but he was 
less antagonistic. 

‘T won’t promise anything,” said Payton, “but Pll 
see.” 

He waited in the hall while Father Morot put on 
his coat. Taking his hat. Father Morot glanced at 
a pile of evening papers on the table. 

“I don’t suppose so many papers have ever been 
sold in so short a time as in the last four months,” 
he said. 

“It is well someone is making something,” said 
Payton. 

“Yes,” said Father Morot, going down the steps. 
“It is well.” 

Payton went back to the fire to struggle with his 
conception of the world. It was a new point of view 
that the “Nipper” was hungry. The forces of life 
were gathered around the “Nipper” and he was shut 
out. He stood a long time motionless, looking into 
the fire. Yet he wasn’t jealous of his lost priority, 
he did not mind. Passion is jealous, but Payton’s 
love for Dante had not been passion. 

Stirring within Payton, the man who scorned 
women, was a dumb respect for Margherita. What 
the priest had said of her pleased him intensely. 

Was it wise to interfere? He had heard chaps 
say — interference only made matters worse. He 
had no memories to lay against this matter. Well 
he might as well turn in. The “Nipper” was late. 
Last night he had noticed the sharp line of his chin, 
he had guessed he was grieving. 


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Then came the sound of a key in the lock. The 
hall door banged. 

Dante came in with his hands in his pockets and 
his head thrown back. His eyes were bright, evi- 
dently he had enjoyed himself. 

“Got the grouch, old chap?” he asked. 

“Feel a bit stodgy,” said Payton, yawning. 

“It’s the dying year. It always makes one feel 
rotten. I went in to see Mrs. Dowden. John goes 
in two weeks.” 

“Were you there all evening?” 

“No, old chap,” answered Dante, “not all.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


J OHN had lived a very simple life since his 
exodus from Haileybury. Payton remarked 
sometimes over his pipe that “old John was a 
simple soul after all.’’ 

In his youth they had recognized in him visions. 
An occasional stretching out to a broad horizon. His 
lack of great brilliancy had been tempered, as it 
were, by his stretching hand. He had not been 
noted for any of the daring qualities that mark a 
boy at school. No Latin odes. No midnight escape 
down the water pipe. No great score at cricket, but 
looking back, Dante remembered that when he was 
to be left at school for the Christmas holidays, it was 
John who had come forward and taken him home. 
And, psychologically speaking, that was the quality 
in him that made John’s existence simple; his quick 
and ready response to the call of life. Sometimes 
the cry of a bird at twilight, or the glow of the 
sun going down behind the hills stirred the Irish 
corpuscles in John’s blood and the wide vision had 
him and, involuntarily, out went his hand, but very 
soon he remembered his mother and Felicity and 
Pansy, and his hand dropped, the far horizon was 
not for him, people were dependent on him, there 
could be no deviations. Yet because no small 


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158 

thought ruffles a man’s mind that does not affect the 
undulations of his life, those long dropped dreams 
that his friends were hardly conscious of were what 
made for him his place in their hearts. So it was 
in the course of his natural traditions that John went 
to war. 

Dante was sitting alone in the light of some thin 
candles in new silver candlesticks picked up by Pay- 
ton, when John came in to say good-by. 

Both men were reserved and found some difficulty 
in touching on his going. Presently John shot in 
from trivialities. “Pm glad to find you alone, Ricci. 
We are off to-morrow early, and I wanted to ask 
you — duffers like I am get missed, you know,” he 
said with a laugh — “but if a bullet gets me — I would 
like you to give an eye to Pansy.” 

Each of the two men were naturally disposed to 
hate anything in the nature of a show of emotion, 
but John, as though putting it upon himself to make 
his meaning clear said with some emphasis: “Of all 
my friends, I would rather make you Pansy’s guard- 
ian, than any.” 

The light from the candles was shaded and Dante 
wondered if John could see the flush that mounted 
to his cheeks as he said that. Dante could not see 
John’s face, but he heard his voice soften as he talked 
of Pansy. 

“She is intelligent, Ricci. She has her mother’s 
brightness,” and then, as if divining that brightness 
might not appeal too greatly to his listener, he 
added, “and my mother’s tenderness and insight.” 


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159 

To this request Dante did not make an immediate 
reply. 

He was trying to steady his voice. The fanaticism 
which for weeks had been burning his soul because he 
was failing his country, and in love with another 
man’s wife, hugged this offer to itself. 

He knew that Pansy was the idol of John’s life. He 
often spoke of himself as “Pansy’s father,” saying 
that what he, John, had failed to do. Pansy would 
do, and now with a sort of unconscious grandeur of 
trust, John was turning her over to the friend who 
had failed in the obligations that life had so far 
offered. In after years, we sometimes wonder 
whether the events that have touched us greatly were 
but impulse, or a startling intuition guided by a very 
fine will. 

Did John know that what Dante needed most to 
lay upon his soul was trust and belief? Perhaps not. 
John Dowden was only a simple soul. 

The past is past, and we are told its consequences 
are no more, and that things are as if they had never 
been, and yet one likes to think John Dowden saw 
deeper and that he knew with his age, that from a 
man’s own infancy he has great difficulty of escape. 

The birds sing and the sun shines and the flowers 
of life may bloom, but the little cloud of those whose 
childhood has not been happy is hard to lift from 
the horizon of life. John was simple, but John with 
his wife and his mother and his child, linked with 
the past, the present and the future may have guessed 
the difficulty to come at life for one who had no 


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normal ties. John may have seen that what made 
Dante gifted, able to write lyric poetry that was 
easily accepted, able to get a mental grasp of things 
outside John’s understanding, was his isolation from 
the common point of view, and with it, with that rare 
balance life always shows, he may have seen the 
counterpoise that life, having so long made Dante a 
bystander and endowed him with the attributes of 
the bystander, made it difficult for him to get back 
into the crowd. 

Perhaps John remembered Crathern’s admonition 
given years before. “Make friends with the other 
fellows, Ricci, come out of yourself.” Intrusive facts 
pass away, but the influence remains. Drive a man 
of Dante’s temperament, bally-rag him, and he 
rushes head-long to destruction. Forgive him and 
trust him. Ah! John Dowden, what have you 
done. He may forget and he may wander, but you 
you have caught him with a hook that will pull him 
his life long. 

Dante was not particularly heeding John’s eulogy 
of Pansy until he stopped. “You will accept, old 
Ricci,” he said timidly. 

“Of course, but I am no great shakes. I am not 
what I intended to be.” 

“We none of us are.” 

“Payton would be better than I.” 

John shook his head, but he spoke of Payton. 
Returning from the office of the C. O. he had met 
him. During the interval, while they stood on the 
street corner, Payton had confided. “He had enlisted 


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as a private. I had told him it was absurd with his 
attainments, but he says England is full of officers 
and he is out for the ‘big punch.’ ” 

Dante was conscious of a pang of bitterness at the 
thought that Payton had enlisted without telling him, 
but that subject had been avoided by them lately. 
They looked up and saw Payton standing in the door- 
way. He had come in unheard. 

“So you’ve told the Nipper,” he said quietly. “I 
had meant to do that myself.” Payton stole a glance 
at him. Dante looked pale. 

“The substance is about to be parted from the 
shadow,” said Payton. John understood. 

“The shadow will be all right,” he replied. 

John and Payton exchanged remarks on the man- 
ner of departure. 

Payton had enlisted as a private because of his 
keenness to be gone, but Payton had his regrets, he 
knew that the friendship which each had exercised 
over the other, time would attenuate. The practical 
argument that he was helpful to Dante was nothing 
to him. Even as he conversed with John, he came 
up behind Dante’s chair and laid his big hand on his 
shoulder, knowing, that played upon by the tide of 
life, the human heart forgets. A silence fell between 
the three men. 

“It is inevitable,” said Payton whimsically, “that 
in the end the substance should be parted from the 
shadow.” 

To Dante’s relief, they fell again to discussion of 
the regiments that would soon leave. 


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162 

Despite the consciousness that John was going, 
that in another few months Payton would go, the 
moment could not hold Dante, his eye wandered to 
the clock on the mantelpiece. It was five minutes to 
nine. At a quarter past nine he was to take the 
manuscript of some ballads he had been writing to 
Margherita to see if she thought them worth setting 
to music. Her husband was returning from Wash- 
ington the following day, and Dante felt he could not 
miss this opportunity. Yet he did not wish to hurt 
John’s feelings, or to seem lacking in affection. The 
clock struck nine. He felt he could give John just 
five minutes more. If he did not go then, he would 
have to make some excuse. 

But John did go. At three minutes past nine, he 
arose and held out his big hand. He gripped Dante 
by the hand, then Payton. Then as if to remind 
Dante of Pansy, he gripped his hand again, and 
without a word, without saying the word “Good-by,” 
John Dowden went through the door. 

At that moment, Dante hated himself, hated that 
in his last visit he had wished old John gone, so, 
under his breath, he swore that he would do his best 
to make it up to Pansy, that was what John wanted, 
after all. 

Now there was Margherita, and he must go. His 
nature and John’s were not far apart, but like the 
droop of a flower that wants water, when the 
moment arrived for his chance of a meeting with 
Margherita, the half of him went wandering in 
answer to this new call. In vain he tried to keep his 


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163 


attention upon some friend, some matter in hand. 
He could not. His eye wandered. His spirit was 
away through some unguarded loop-hole and his 
mind would not be brought back. Soft and subtje 
came the call to his unmoving spirit until in imagina- 
tion he was off. It was Margherita. He must go. 


CHAPTER XXII 


I T was evening and it was April. John Dowden 
had arrived in England. Payton had got him- 
self into a badly fitting private’s uniform pro- 
vided by the Government. He was unjustly proud 
of it, declaring that never having had a mother, it 
was the only suit ever bought him by a woman, and 
this none other than Canada herself. 

His lance corporal had a sense of humor, and Pay- 
ton was in clover, but outside the tranquil amusement 
that he felt at handing himself over to the Govern- 
ment to be clothed and quartered ran an anxiety 
about the “Nipper,” who had not enlisted, and who, 
in those first spring days, seemed to be drinking 
deeply of the moods of life. 

Since her husband’s return, Dante had seen Mar- 
gherita only once, and slowly the loss of those here- 
tofore innocent meetings stole into his spirit like an 
illness. Does the little god who watches the shifting 
values of man, laugh? Perhaps. 

Not a change of attitude, but what he sees. He 
knows the bloom of magic meetings. He knows how 
solemn and delicious they are long before the chief 
actors have guessed it themselves, and for the most 
part he waits, sardonic, wise, until, for some cred- 
itable reason — those magic meetings are stopped. 

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165 

Then comes debouching into the minds of at least 
one of those deprived ones, what has been so obvious 
to the little god all along, that those moments of 
meeting were at first accidental, then they became a 
habit, and lastly, how the little god laughs, lastly, 
they have become a necessity. 

Dante was not versed in the ways of women. 
Margherita was forever in shadow, forever emerg- 
ing only to draw back. At times she seemed to un- 
derstand his state of mind, almost to permit it, and 
then again she withdrew into a remoteness when she 
hardly allowed his thoughts to follow her. He 
loved her moods, but they had a very agitating effect 
upon him, and there was something Latin to him 
about her mind as if having lived in the clear atmos- 
phere of Italy, it had retained something of the clear- 
ness of the Italian atmosphere. After her little bursts 
of wrath at something he had done, she often made up 
the quarrel by discussing with him the merits of a 
good style in literature and as Dante ventured to turn 
his eyes towards her, at his recognition that he knew 
that she was “making up,” her face would break into 
its brightest smile. It was true that her flashes of 
tenderness drew him closer; but it was also clear that 
her moments of coldness stirred in him a tenacity 
that had ideal passion in it, more than the persistence 
of a pleasure seeker. He thought of her constantly, 
of what she thought and felt and he knew that 
though he lived for a thousand years, he would never 
love anyone like that again. 

Yet that April evening as, in the darkness, he 


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1 66 

stood out in the street across the way and watched 
her house, he was not happy. Serenity was not in 
the air because there were gusts of wind that fore- 
boded a storm, but in spite of the lowering sky, the 
air was full of promise — the promise of half-grown 
leaves. Under the softening earth was the quivering 
of life waking from winter sleep. Spring gave to 
Dante her upborne feeling and his spirit and senses 
took fire until it seemed to him that he was not him- 
self any more, but just part of the great yearning of 
the world. So he stood with his hat in his hand, 
watching the windows of Margherita’s house and the 
thought that he was forever outside angered Rim. 
What if her husband had brought word that she and 
he were to go back to Italy. What if he were losing 
her? He did not know. It was absurd to be 
anxious, but he had not seen her for several weeks. 

A little sharp wind shivered through the night. 
He saw a flame light up the curtains of the drawing 
room. Someone was stirring the fire. It was she. 
Dinner was over and she had gone upstairs. Unable 
to keep still, he walked a little along the street. As 
he turned to retrace his steps a taxi drew up in front 
of Margherita’s house. The driver got out, rang 
the bell, and returned to his car. Presently the door 
opened and Borghese descended the steps. Dante’s 
heart became light. Borghese gave instructions which 
could not be heard, got into the car, and shut the 
door with a sharp click. The car palpitated a little, 
backed slightly, then suddenly shot forward into the 
darkness. Dante’s heart became like a feather in 


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167 

the wind, fate was favoring him. All his life he had 
been waiting, waiting, waiting, but the spirit of wait- 
ing was sick in him. He would wait no more. 

There was no moon, no stars, just the gusts of 
wind that blew down the street and the great up- 
bearing of the spring. He crossed the road. He 
went up the stone steps. Borghese had left the outer 
door open, the inside door was on the latch. Dante 
did not ring. He opened the door and stepped into 
the hall. He did not wait in the hall. No one was 
there. No one saw him. Quietly he walked up the 
stairs. 

At the top of the stairs he turned to the drawing 
room. As he crossed the threshold he saw that 
Margherita was standing by the fireplace, looking at 
the door. It was almost as if she had been expecting 
him. 

For a moment he stood with his eyes on the 
ground, for the beating of his heart would not allow 
him to go further. So he did not see her eyes sud- 
denly grow dark nor the quiver of the muscles of her 
throat. Then he went over to her and gathered her 
into his arms. 

He inclined his face towards hers. “I love you,” 
he said, “I love you,” with his cheek laid against her 
cheek. 

“I know,” she answered, “I know.” 

So they clung together, in the quiet, half-lighted 
room, with no sound but the intermittent cracking of 
the fire and the loud beating of their own hearts. 
What is the realm of conscience and faith to this 


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glow that is greater than the glow of any hearth, this 
clinging of flesh and flesh until the spirit itself takes 
on a new candor I Fervid it is, and fluid with the 
message that life is close at hand and the future not 
to be considered. 

And as he stood there, Dante knew that Mar- 
gherita was for him the essence of woman, the 
material embodiment of his long vision. 

Outside, the wind blew in gusts down the street. 
The shutter creaked on its hinges and as they were 
freed of that noise, footsteps came slowly up the un- 
carpeted oak stairs. It was characteristic of both of 
them that they did not start apart. Subterfuge was not 
for them. They stood waiting. At the top of the stairs 
the footsteps paused — then they passed down the 
hall. On how little does fate depend I 

Standing there, Dante lost the sense of being 
remote in the world and small, instead he felt big 
with a power that could snap the universe in his 
fingers. 

Then they drew apart and looked into each other’s 
faces. In Margherita’s, Dante saw woman tran- 
scendent. And as Margherita looked in his eyes to 
the dark recesses of his soul, she saw the same look 
that she had seen the day of the picnic at the Abbey, 
a look of youth and wonder. 

“I love you,” he said, spreading out his hands as 
though to ward off his helplessness. 

“I know,” she answered, “I know.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


S ometimes it seems that the human hand is 
small, that its grasp of actualities is limited, 
for how often do we see as it stretches out 
after some newer blossom, a flower which it already 
had gathered, loosen and fall from its grasp. Like 
the wild swans at Coole, the heart has a constant 
yearning for some new flight, in the vain hope that 
life itself may be renewed, but the balance of the 
heart is kept because what life gives on the one side, 
she takes from the other. 

Dante was almost happy in those late spring days. 
He had sacrificed his conscience, holding back from 
enlisting and for the moment it seemed so very much 
worth while. And in his new happiness, he did not 
see that Payton was drifting away from him on a 
fast tide ; for if Dante was happier than he had ever 
been, so was Payton. 

It is said that conscious influence never molds a 
man, that it is only unconscious influence that touches 
the things, perhaps, that he hardly admits even to 
himself. While Dante had tried to force his idealism 
on Payton, Payton withstood it, easily withstood it, 
being so much the stronger soul, but when filled with 
the thought of Margherita, he let fall his influence, 
the seed of idealism he dropped was blown to Pay- 
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ton’s pagan heart. The spirit of the old warriors 
entered Payton, he had not any of the physical dread 
which belongs more to soft, pleasure-loving natures. 
He had no fear of death. He cared not a jot for 
life. He was a gambler and he lacked principles, 
and in a rather pathetic manner, knowing his own 
worst points far better than anyone could tell him, 
his spontaneous joy when he found in his own breast 
a love of patriotism was almost naive. 

Men traveled fast in those first years of war, and 
what a man chose to cling to was not the choice of a 
moment, but he was guided to it by the quality of his 
previous life. The world turns on its axis and Pay- 
ton, whose heart had found no axis, Payton the 
Pagan, who did not believe in women, in religion or 
art, had found his central idea and he effected the 
transition from the old life to the new, quite simply. 
He had something to work for, something to serve, 
something to give himself up to at last. Once 
mounted upon their Pegasus men of his ilk ride hard. 
He enlisted as a private. He meant to rise from 
the ranks. His broad, red-brown face grew thinner. 
A darker hue came into his pale blue eyes, even 
physically he was dominated by this new idea. His 
manner was less dominant, more conciliatory. 

Payton’s man. Maxwell, noticed it. 

One evening he brought into the library a bottle of 
rare old brandy and set it with some glasses on a 
tray with a very deliberate air. Dante watched him. 

"What is that for. Maxwell?” he asked, feeling 


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171 

a little curious and knowing that particular brand 
was only kept for rare occasions. 

“There are only three bottles left, Mister Dante.” 
Dante was always “Mister Dante.” Payton — “Sir.” 
“I thought the master might as well have them be- 
fore he leaves.” 

This small thing struck Dante, he knew Maxwell 
obeyed orders, but that he never had originated a 
thought. 

Maxwell stood there looking at the carpet. “I 
don’t believe the master is well,” he said. “He 
h’asked me about my wife yesterday. It’s the first 
time he has more than given me an order in three 
years.” 

Without looking up, Dante answered, “I haven’t 
noticed anything. He is working hard.” 

Maxwell descended to the kitchen. “Cook,” he 
said, “the h’unobservation of the h’upper clashes is 
peculiar. The Master is eating his ’art out and the 
‘Nipper,’ as ’e calls ’im, hasn’t noticed it. The 
h’upper classes ain’t human, cook, they ain’t human.” 

“ ’Ave a bit of cold tenderloin, before you go 
home, Mr. Maxwell,” said the cook, “it will put a 
little strength into you.” 

“I don’t mind if I do, Cook, but the h’upper 
classes lack sympathy, though I do say it.” 

Drawn to his attention, Dante noticed many little 
things that had gone unobserved. Strong forces were 
at work in both of them, and as their influences were 
directly diverse, the common mood was hostile. In 
the evening as they related the news of the day to 


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each other at dinner, they found the old camaraderie 
gone. Payton, whose life had been personal, was 
now engrossed in the impersonal, Dante, who had 
only cared for ideals, was engrossed by a personality. 

“By the way,” Payton remarked one evening. “It 
is time you enlisted, no doubt you mean to, but you 
had better do it before there is conscription.” He 
was looking hard at the end of his cigar, pretending 
to be much interested in it. 

“I am obliged to tell you that your conduct is pro- 
voking criticism,” he continued. 

“What am I doing?” Dante asked, turning 
towards him and looking him straight in the eyes. 

Payton struck boldly. “Making a fool of yourself 
over a woman,” he said. “I am not talking of inner 
feelings. I am speaking of outward appearances. 
At Haileybury, at Oxford, at the Pulp Company, 
you bragged about what you could do. Maybe it’s 
a good thing, it keeps up your own courage, but there 
are limits to everything. It is all very well to take 
the top-lofty manner, but one day people will call 
your bluff and bragging has no sense at all if it goes 
on too long. I may be mistaken,” he ventured to 
say, “perhaps appearances are misleading. In any 
case. Father Morot ” 

“The beastly priest ” said Dante, his face 

white with rage. 

“If I am mistaken,” Payton interrupted. 

“No, you are not mistaken,” Dante said slowly. 
He was about to plead his own cause, but was sud- 
denly conscious that Payton would not understand 


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173 


him. It would have been better to speak openly, it 
might have cleared the air, instead, Dante shrugged 
his shoulders. “You can’t preach morals to me,’’’ he 
said with a certain degree of bitterness. He felt he 
was not only retaliating like a child, but showing his 
worst side. He felt he was burning his boats. 

“What do you mean?” Payton asked with an 
ominous quietness. In spite of the knowledge, he 
was saying something he might well wish unsaid, 
Dante’s temper was up and running away with him. 

“What do you mean?” repeated Payton quietly 

“Oh, getting control of the Pulp Company. The 
way you did it. It is done, I know, but not with the 
high moral tone.” Dante’s face was rigid. 

“You were glad enough to profit by it,” said Pay- 
ton. 

Payton’s words produced an effect he did not 
expect. 

“Unfortunately,” Dante said bitterly, “but now I 
have a good intention of giving it up. It is not my 
job. It is yours.” 

“Don’t be a fool,” said Payton, more anxious than 
he wanted to admit. 

“The trick of dependence grows,” Dante said 
gravely. “It feeds on itself. I may stay on, because 
I am too much of a coward to get out.” 

Both men listened to the rain become heavier and 
heavier. The stormy heavens seemed taking part in 
their quarrel. Before they parted for the night, 
Dante made a move of reconciliation, a move to 


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make their stormy quarrel into a ^rainbow-tinted 
shower. 

“This conversation, I wish it had not happened.” 

But it had happened, and angry words once let out 
of their cage, return like birds of ill omen to the 
memory. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


N ina arrived from England, hardened, reck- 
less and always lawless. Her adventure in 
life still unrealized. She was staying with 
Margherita. 

“Tired of Tommies,” she cabled. “Coming for 
a month, Nina.” 

Wherever she was, Nina wished to be somewhere 
else. Her life was always elsewhere. She saw the 
signs of course. Signs of “that young Mr. Ricci,” as 
she called him, and in her letter to Fitzmaurice, men- 
tioned in the postscript, “Margherita has caught her 
Canadian fish in Canadian waters.” 

At her worst, though, Nina was kind and, sooner 
or later, she squared her accounts. She remembered 
the night at Foto. Saki and the moonlight, the 
parted curtain and the shocked face of the young 
Colonial. How she and Saki had laughed. They 
had guessed of course, he had supposed her Mar- 
gherita. Now someone had lent Nina a lake. 
“Trout,” she said, “and a bungalow.” So she 
secured “the young Colonial,” and then pounced 
upon Margherita. 

“But you really must not ask him,” protested Mar- 
gherita in alarm. 


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“I have,” said Nina resolutely. “I’ll wear dark 
glasses and a black bonnet.” 

“Dear, crazy Nina,” said Margherita, blushing. 

“Pent up children,” said Nina, “and life just a 
minute. What will I do, though?” she asked with 
a smile. 

“I hope the trout will rise,” Margherita began. 

“Rise, Margo, of course. The stones will rise up 
out of the lake when they see me.” 

Dante was beside himself with joy. He could 
hardly endure until Friday came. 

They were to take a local train and motor the last 
twenty miles in a Ford, but late Thursday night, 
Nina telephoned to be ready at eight in the morning, 
they were to motor all the way. They started in a 
downpour, Dante beside the chauffeur, the two 
women behind. After a while the rain stopped and 
the sun came out, making that odd effect of tearful 
beauty, like a face that is smiling, though the cheeks 
are still wet with tears. 

“The rain has laid the dust,” Dante called back, 
watching the speedometer touch the forty-five miles 
an hour. 

“Chosen of the gods,” retaliated Nina, and was 
nudged by Margherita. 

They stopped at a country hotel for luncheon. 
One of its chief characteristics was a spring fly-screen 
door which banged incessantly. Also over the brass 
lighting apparatus in the center of the room was a 
drapery of white muslin to preserve the brass from 
the walk of the fly. 


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177 


“We all have our obsessions,” said Nina, observ- 
ing these things with great interest. “The people 
here are evidently obsessed by the oncoming fly. This 
wayside Ritz reminds me of Fitzmaurice. It is full 
of local color and discomfort. When one is partic- 
ularly uncomfortable, Fitzmaurice calls it local 
color.” 

After luncheon they continued on their journey. 
About four o’clock the road entered a little wood and 
began to climb. An invisible lark sent forth a song 
of joy. They emerged from the wood and from the 
hill saw the river lying far below. 

“The river looks like a Japanese print,” Mar- 
gherita pointed. “A streak of indigo and spongy, 
crumpled foam.” 

“Ruskin,” Dante said, turning to look at her. “I 
have caught you out.” 

They crossed the loop of the terminus and came to 
the crossroad. 

An old habitant took the pipe out of his mouth, 
waved the butt end of it, and called, “C’est le beau 
chemin.” 

“Pour St. Fidele ” Dante cried. 

The old man waved again. 

“C’est le beau chemin,” he said again. 

The country became less settled, the houses far- 
ther apart. They passed a woman carrying two 
pails, full of a green mess. 

“What is that for?” Nina asked curiously. 

“The pigs,” Dante called. 

“What?” screamed Nina, intent on knowing. 


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“The pigs,” Dante shouted again. 

The road became very uneven and the car slowed 
down. As they passed the houses, their evening meal 
over, women sat rocking on the little platforms in 
front of the doors. 

“The women aren’t pretty,” said Nina with an air 
of disappointment. “Why aren’t they?” 

“They work too hard,” answered Dante. He 
loved the country and he hated to hear Nina find 
even the women lacking in any quality. And ahead 
of him he saw the darkening wood and the road 
leading into it again. Nina took off her hat and 
began to sing in a crooning, deep voice — 


“Come fold your tent, my gypsy man, 

At daylight leaves the caravan.’' 

“There is gypsy blood in me. I respond to the 
wilds,” she said. 

And guessing that Nina was thinking of Fitz- 
maurice and that the beauty of her surroundings in- 
duced her to think of him, Margherita talked to 
Nina a little of Fitzmaurice. 

And Nina, whom nothing escaped, slipped her 
arm through Margherita’s, and snuggled up to her. 

“Men are our test,” she said with a slender fore- 
finger pointing at Dante’s back, “they prove our sum 
of life.” 

So the leagues drew away from town. 

They began to follow the bend of the river. In 
a section of the sky a star appeared, shy, slightly 
visible, like a guest who arrives too soon, and beyond 


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179 


the river stood the mountains higher and ever wilder, 
ever more imposing, and so the car ran on. They 
passed through a gate and entered a wood of birches. 
The trees darkened the road. The chauffeur turned 
on his lamps. The distances drew in upon them. 
Then the chauffeur blew his horn and the road came 
out upon a bungalow by a quiet lake. 

“We will dine,” said Nina, “and when the moon 
is up, go out and mark the stars upon the lake.” 

Nina had sent her chef ahead. One side of Nina 
was a materialist. She did not despise turtle soup, 
or think lake trout spoiled by sauce Hollandaise. 
Only the trout was for their eating in the wilds, but 
Nina’s chef had arrived with a generous hamper. 

They dined, and dined well. Then Nina stretched 
her hands above her head. She had taken off her 
jacket and her lithe figure was strangely attractive in 
its short skirt and thin lingerie blouse. 

“Children,” she said, “life’s but a minute and I 
am going to bed.” She raised her eyebrows, laughed, 
lighted her candle, and went up the stairs. They 
heard her steps crossing to and fro upstairs, again 
they heard her sing — 

“Come fold your tent, O gypsy man.^* 

and some time after, the resolution — 

“At daylight leaves the caravan.” 

Then the footsteps v^ere silent. 

When her song ceased, if they could have looked 
up through the floor, they would have seen Nina take 


i8o THE NEW WORLD 

from her dressing case a green morocco portfolio 
and find between the pages of its blotting paper an 
old snap shot, yellow with time, faded a little, torn 
at one corner. A snap shot of a young man in his 
cricket clothes. 

Nina took it to the candle light and looked at it. 

“Fitzmaurice,” said Nina, under the candle light 
to the faded photograph. “Such oceans beyond the 
young Colonial. Fitzmaurice, the greatest darling 

that ever lived, but ” Nina put the printTack 

between the blotting paper, “in himself complete.” 

It was then the listeners downstairs heard her 
sing — 


“At daylight leaves the caravan.’’ 

Downstairs, after Nina had disappeared, there 
was silence. Beyond the echo of Nina’s feet going 
to and fro, the house was still. The moonlight came 
through the casement window and mingled with the 
light of the lamp on the center table, making that 
mixed light by which country people go to bed. 
Through the door the air which came in was cool, 
having passed over and been chilled by the water of 
the lake. But in spite of the cool draft the blush on 
Margherita’s cheek changed to a lesser hue and 
became permanent. She seemed trying to conquer a 
restlessness and sat twisting her bracelet around her 
wrist, and from where he was, Dante watched her 
and through the casement above her head, the moon 
sailing over the lake. He felt that the beating of 
his heart was the only sound, but accompanying it he 


THE NEW WORLD 


i8i 


heard the gentle lapping of the wind waves of the 
lake. Then floating down through the darkness 
came the echo of Nina’s song — 

“At daylight leaves the caravan/’ 

as If Nina would remind them that the course of 
love and the course of life alike run on vigorously 
and are ever changing and may not be stayed. Dante 
arose now like a man with a purpose. He stretched 
out his hands to help Margherita up from her low 
chair. 

“The boat is tied to the landing, shall we go?” 

Something stirred in the depths of Margherita’s 
eyes. 

In the wood beyond the wheat-field, a whip-poor- 
will was calling. The hills around the lake towered 
black and rugged against the sky, and as if in curi- 
osity about the pair going hand in hand down to the 
landing, here and there appeared the twinkle of 
some star in the sky, and the eyes of the pair that 
went down the path hand in hand were bright, 
mortal reflections of the immortal stars, with a 
mortal brightness too easily put out. But who was 
there beside that quiet lake to mind? Not a living 
soul, with Nina gone to bed and quite forgetful of 
her chaperon’s promise of the black bonnet, and the 
pale moon seeking her own reflection in the lake. 

Dante held the canoe steady by the side as Mar- 
gherita settled herself in the bow, then he loosed the 
rope and seated himself in the stern. With his pad- 


i 82 


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die he pushed his light craft from the landing and 
pointed her to the middle of the lake. 

The lake was four miles long. With here and 
there upon its shore, an indentation, a deep, sandy 
bay. “Wonderful for a houseboat,” said Dante, 
pointing his canoe into one of the deep pockets. 

Margherita put her hand over the side and 
dragged her fingers in the water. 

“Say you love me, Margherita,” Dante’s voice 
was a little husky. 

“No, Priceless, certainly not. If you love me as 
you say you do, you won’t ask me.” 

“Why, Margherita? You don’t mean that.” 

“Don’t change anything,” she implored in a trem- 
bling voice. “Let everything remain as it is.” 

Dante headed again to midlake. It was too dark 
for him to see the radiance in Margherita’s face. He 
only heard her words. 

“You make anyone think that loving is a thing 
that can be done at will, a kind of cloak to be taken 
on or off,” he said presently. 

“No, no, I don’t,” she said gently, “but Granny’s 
ghost tells me I ought not to give way to saying it.” 

“But you love me, don’t you, and you want to say 
it, say you do.” 

“Perhaps, I do. Priceless,” she said tenderly, “but 
we ought to be struggling against it.” She struggled 
with herself. 

“You’ve got to take love where you find it,” he 
said solemnly, “if you wish to live.” 

They did not see each other, they only saw the 


THE NEW WORLD 183 

forms of each other outlined against the gray. On 
the right they heard the cry of a loon. 

“In England/’ said Margherita as if she were 
contrasting the two countries, “there is gravity and 
order and a bewildering tidiness. The women are 
like Nina, Priceless, and the men are like ” 

“Fitzmaurice,” suggested Dante. 

“In a measure. Here life swings out. It is more 
urgent.” 

“I want love,” Dante said, “not friendship. I 
cannot think of you apart from me.” 

The canoe moved like a black streak upon the 
water. 

A strange rage filled Dante of that other life. An 
obstinacy settled down on him, but his paddle moved 
quickly. 

“Life is intangible,” he said after a time. *Tou 
are always waiting — waiting for something to hap- 
pen. Nothing else seems to matter. There is always 
that rocking in the darkness of the world, and inter- 
twining with the movement, a slow swinging to the 
big moment, and a hope of being borne from the 
depths on a rising flood.” 

“And after the big moment. Priceless?” Mar- 
gherita asked breathlessly, “what after?” 

“I don’t know, dear. I haven’t had it yet, but it 
could never be the old barren life again.” 

And still the canoe swung on to the end of the lake 
over the luminous and breathless stillness of the 
water, but just at the shore was a little lapping of 


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184 

waves like the chatter of idle gossips about two who 
have for them no regard. 

At the end of the lake on a sandy bay, Dante 
grounded his canoe. 

3|t S|£ * 3|C * 

It is said that a lonely poacher waiting on the 

edges of the lake for the darkness to lift saw just at 
dawn a canoe swing out from a sandy bay, but the 
poacher was trespassing. The young birch tree that 
he had just peeled for a trout rod, should have been 
still standing listening to the flutter of its own leaves. 
The poacher dreamed of a rich catch, so he stood 
trance-like as a canoe with two occupants passed quite 
near the shore. 

Who the occupants were, the lonely poacher did 
not gainsay. As Dante and Margherita walked up 
to the house, they saw that a snipe, attracted by the 
long waiting light in Margherita’s window, had 
flown against the pane and stunned by the concussion 
of its beak upon the glass, had fallen dead to the 
ground. 


PART THREE 


THE ROADS OF CHANCE 

Another — 

See, he is fast asleep now. Oh ! he is dead I 

Fool — 

Do not stir. He asked for a sign that you 
might be saved. Look what has come from 
his mouth ... a little winged thing ... a 
little shining thing ... It has gone to the 
door. The angel has taken it in her hands 
. . . she will open her hands in the Garden 
of Paradise . . . 


—W. B. Yeats. 


\ 




« 





1 


I 



CHAPTER XXV 


A WAY from his own country — away from time — 
r\ between the East and the West, John Dow- 
den waited for the dawn. He stood on a 
sack in a trench, his arms leaning on the edge and 
his chin resting on his arms, one of many millions 
who have watched the sun come up to touch the 
dunes of Flanders for the last time. And as John 
waited, his thoughts were back in Canada with his 
wife and child. He wondered what they were doing 
and he realized with the difference in time, that night 
was beginning in Canada and that they were prob- 
ably asleep. He thought of Pansy, her snub nose 
covered with freckles as though the sun’s touch had 
lingered long upon this happy young profile. Pansy 
slept with her hands under the pillow and her face 
pressed vigorously against its edge, and with her 
head moored securely to. the pillow, her feet moved 
among the bed clothes, and pursuing some light but- 
terfly of her dreams. Miss Pansy was wont to shake 
off the hampering clothes. John smiled at this pic- 
ture that his brain renewed. How often his last act 
at night had been to go into Pansy’s room and with 
gentle hands cover Pansy’s restless little form. And 
then John thought of Felicity, of her brightness, the 
curl on her neck just behind her ear, the way she 
187 


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tossed her head as she laughed. And mixed together 
in John’s simple heart were sadness and contentment. 
Contentment that in this rough and tumble world, 
God had seen fit to give him so much — for standing 
in the dawn taking his last glimpse at life, John un- 
derstood many things — and one thing that he under- 
stood was the rise and fall of life — ^the portion of 
the individual — the sure knowledge it is always, so 
much, but no more. Still, mixed with John’s content- 
ment was sadness, that In the flesh, in the known 
familiar surroundings In this world, he would never 
see Pansy and Felicity again. 

The dawn won its way across the dunes. A light 
breeze turned the long wings of a windmill away to 
the left and as the day broke, John stood with a 
watch In each hand waiting — ^At six o’clock he was 
to advance with his men. 

At twenty minutes past six, two men were carrying 
a stretcher, picking their way among the holes behind 
the lines. One man had but lately come out and was 
new to the sights and the sadness. 

“Fine face, this poor beggar,” he said disjointedly. 

“Yes,” said the other. “His poor body is all shot 
to bits.” 

“It’s a fine face,” the first man repeated. 

That was a stranger’s opinion. The last verdict 
pronounced on John Dowden. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


T he night that John Dowden spent in Flanders 
waiting for the dawn, in Canada was hot and 
sultry, indeed, its distinguishing feature was a 
great heat and a traversing moon. It was nearly nine 
o’clock, the roofs of the houses, the motionless leaves 
of the trees, the asphalt pavements, all seemed to be 
giving out an unbearable heat. While John in 
Flanders with the difference in time, was lying 
wrapped in his trench-coat, thinking of the interests 
of his company and beyond them of his little family 
at home. Felicity was bending forward at her dress- 
ing table, arranging with her fingers and thumb, her 
curls most carefully over her ear. She heard the 
honk-honk of a motor, and going to the window, she 
looked down. A Rolls-Royce drew up in front of 
the door of her apartment house. There were not 
many cars of this particular make in Canada at that 
time, and it was well known that one of the few in 
use belonged to that “slacker,” White-face Bailey. 

Strangely enough this night, a man alighted who 
answered very strongly to the description of White- 
face. In the first place, he was undersized. His 
body was too long for his legs. His arms were too 
long for his body, his hands, when they hung at his 
side, coming almost on a level with his knees. He 
189 


190 


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walked not in the decided, crisp way of a man whose 
mind and body respond rhythmically, but haltingly, 
with a gait that met half-way between furtiveness 
and bravado. As he passed into the building, he 
raised his hat, uncovering a face that decidedly 
resembled the shape of a pear. The impression that 
he left was neither one of confidence nor pleasure. 

As the cathedral clock struck nine, two people 
came out to the street. It was again the man with 
the ungainly walk, but this time he was not alone, 
beside him was a young woman with the quick, dart- 
ing movements of a bird. She wore a tightly fitting 
motor hat, but under it, her fair curls escaped just 
above her ear. Her small head was set gracefully 
on her slight shoulders and the child-like expression 
of her personality was one of gayety and brightness. 
Before she stepped into the car, she looked at it a 
moment with an approving glance, as if its size and 
strength pleased her, then with a gay laugh she 
jumped in, followed by her companion. 

In midsummer, in town there is nothing to modify 
on some evenings, the sullen heat, and, strangely 
enough, the mood that predominates is the mood of 
foreboding. It is as though the universe contracted 
and the whole world was a dream — a dream for the 
moment brought too near. The doors of the uni- 
verse are closed and those who find themselves to- 
gether, find their thoughts centered on each other. It 
is not that they see each other in a different light, it 
is that they become ominous, intensified. 

White-face sat back in his car. He was fat. His 


THE NEW WORLD 


191 

cheeks were puffed and white. The proportions of 
his figure were much too thick for those of a young 
man, but in the car, Felicity was not conscious of his 
short-comings, he merely became ominous. Worldli- 
ness, a wish to be smart, being one of the instinctive 
motives of Felicity’s life, when under the gleam from 
the corner electric lights the mediocre profile of her 
companion became apparent, strangely it was ameli- 
orated by the undulatory motion of his very expen- 
sive car. 

Standing on the curb, waiting to cross from the 
barracks, Payton saw them. He recognized White- 
face who, unknowing that critical eyes were fixed 
upon him, was bending in a very affectionate manner 
over Felicity. 

“Eros gone lame,” muttered Payton, “Eros gone 
lame.” 

Had Payton not been in a cynical mood that epi- 
sode might have been looked upon less critically by 
him, but on that night, he was exaggerating the 
cynicism of life. Dante had slipped away without 
telling him he was going. As he threaded his way 
to his rooms, he hated the rottenness of life. Strong 
in his soul was the scent of patriotism, of big things 
done in a big way, and here in the dim, pale shadow 
was the jangle of Eros gone lame. A sense of 
injustice to old John came over him. 

It was not merely a vain illusion that life was busy 
with the trio of Haileybury that night. Dantd was 
away in the mountains paddling a canoe over a dark 
lake. In Flanders John Dowden was waiting for 


192 


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the dawn, and Payton was going home for the last 
time. The moon shone down through the heavy air 
as Payton let himself into his apartment. 

From the silence of his Master’s study, Maxwell 
emerged. 

A cynical smile twisted Payton’s mouth. 

“Not gone home?” he said. 

“No, sir,” Maxwell answered quickly. “I was 
just lighting up. I expected you, sir.” 

The smile on Payton’s face died away. 

“You know?” he asked with a frown. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“How did you hear?” Payton was annoyed his 
news should have leaked out. 

“I was down at the barracks. I heard a private 
tell his Missis. I came straight back.” 

“Confound it!” said Payton. “Mister Dante ” 

“He went away this morning, sir. He doesn’t 
know.” 

Payton’s regiment was to leave early next day. He 
had often thought that if his regiment went at sud- 
den notice, he would leave without telling Dante he 
was going. And it was an instance of the supreme 
irony of the heart that when this very thing became 
obligatory, it seemed to sear his soul. He took off 
his belt and handed it to Maxwell. 

“God is well dressed to-night,” he said with a 
smile. 

“Beg pardon, sir.” 

“Do you ever read. Maxwell?” 

“Sometimes, sir.” 


THE NEW WORLD 


193 


“Ever read Carlyle, Maxv/ell?” 

“Can’t say as I ’ave, sir.” 

“Carlyle thinks the firmament — ^the universe, is 
but the clothing of the spirit of God. The stars and 
the sky are God’s clothing and cover Him just as 
your clothes cover your vile body. Maxwell.” 

“Quite so, sir.” 

“God is wearing beautiful stars to-night. Max- 
well.” 

“I understand, sir.” 

“You may bring me a whisky and soda.” 

As Payton sipped his whisky and soda, he looked 
around him, at his library for which he had never 
really cared. 

To him that evening, it seemed suddenly comfort- 
able. It was the only study that he had ever fur- 
nished. It, with the rest of the apartment was the 
only home he had had that had not been rented fur- 
nished. Definitely, as he sat looking at his collection 
of books, his few pictures, he realized how much of 
a habit it had become. 

Maxwell’s head parted the curtains, followed by 
Maxwell’s body. 

“Can I get you anything more, sir?” he inter- 
rupted. 

Payton did not answer. 

Another evening Maxwell would have gone quietly 
away, but to-night he waited. 

“You will stay on here. Maxwell, until I come 
back.” 

“Very good, sir.” 


194 the new world 

“You will see that Mister Dante is comfortable.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Payton put down his glass, 

“What do you think of me, Maxwell?” he asked 
with a smile. 

Payton’s question broke down Maxwell’s reserve. 
“I think,” Maxwell began, his voice trembling a 
little, “in little things you are like a spoiled child, but 
in big things you are like — God Almighty, sir.” 

Payton’s smile broadened into a grin. “A gentle- 
man’s gentleman — a man’s valet ought to know. 
You give me a good reference. Maxwell.” 

“Is there anything more, sir?” 

“No, you understand. You stay here until I come 
back.” 

“Quite so, sir.” 

When Maxwell had gone, Payton went over to his 
desk. He pulled a large waste-paper basket near 
him and began sorting and tearing up papers. 
Everything he destroyed, except a small packet 
which he tied with red tape and labeled — “Dante 
Ricci, to be opened in case of my death.” When he 
had finished his task, he went back to the sofa, put 
a pillow under his head, turned on an electric fan 
and, without taking off his clothes, prepared to spend 
the rest of the night where he was. He crossed his 
arms under his head and closed his eyes, but he did 
not sleep. He was vexed with himself for minding. 
Yet that night he could have wished the “Nipper” 
at home. The sense of defect in him that Payton 
had felt since the war, made him cling with all the 


THE NEW WORLD 


195 


force of strength as well as affection. Friendship is 
not only intensified by admiration, it is sometimes 
more intensified by consciousness that it is needed. 

At half past six, Payton arose and prepared to go 
down to the barracks. He looked into the pantry as 
he passed through the hall and saw Maxwell sitting 
on a high stool, his arms crossed on the table, his 
head on his arms. “My disciple is asleep,” Payton 
said as he let himself out. Maxwell did not hear 
him. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


W HAT happened to Dante on his return was 
what happens often in life to every mortal 
man. It is the experience of reaction in life. 
Backwards and forwards over human beings goes 
the pendulum of Nemesis. At one end is happiness, 
at the other, sorrow, and between are the various 
degrees of joy and pain, and reaction is: that always 
if one has touched beauty, or power, or love, back 
goes the pendulum to ugliness, weakness and loneli- 
ness. 

That week end had been a time of magic. One of 
those very rare occasions when the earth is not earth 
any more, but a new world. Love had put forth his 
power. The things that had been his life, his work, 
his writing, his friendship remained, but were com- 
pelled into the background by the brightness of this 
new emotion. 

As he drove home from the station on Monday 
evening, Dante shrank a little from meeting Payton. 
He had not told him where he was going and he did 
not want to be questioned. No, he did not want to 
be questioned. 

As he drove along, he enjoyed the wave of the 
wind on his face. The day had been hot, but at 
sundown a little breeze had sprung up and the. streets 
196 


THE NEW WORLD 


197 

were full of people who had come out to get a breath 
of air. 

He saw with his mind’s eye, the inner life of that 
great mass of humanity, he speculated with a new 
vehemence about it, and what the masses had of 
beauty and wonder in their lives. These tired 
women dragging their offspring depressed him. 

Suddenly the car drew up at his own door. He 
paid the driver, giving him more than his fare and 
taking his bags, went in. He rang the bell and 
waited. Presently the door was opened. Maxwell 
stood there. Maxwell gave a little movement of 
distress. 

“What is it?” Dante asked quietly. He inferred 
that something was wrong. 

Maxwell flung out his arms. 

“The Master — the Master I” he cried, wringing 
his hands. “The Master is gone. You were away. 
I was asleep. And the Master went — like that.” 

Dante wanted to vent his own feelings on Max- 
well, but something in him withheld him, kepf him. 
He said nothing except, “Take my bags.” Then he 
passed into the quarters that he and Payton had 
shared. To him, whose existence was bound up in 
his few friends, the loss of Payton was no small 
matter. 

In the study he saw a draft of Payton’s will. He 
saw the letter directed to himself, but only to be 
opened in case of need. No word for immediate 
consolation, there was nothing for to-night. Almost 
he felt as he stood there, that Payton’s heavy hand 


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would come down on his shoulder, but nothing hap- 
pened and the walls of the room stared back at him. 
Maxwell came to the door. 

“There’s a note from Mrs. Dowden, sir,” he said. 
“She has telephoned you several times. It seems 
Mr. John has paid the supreme sacrifice.” 

Again Dante wanted to curse Maxwell. He 
hated his way of telling it. 

He took the note and read it. Then a sound 
came through his lips, a muttering whisper, but it 
died away and he looked Maxwell straight in the 
eye. It was part of his creed to show no emotion to 
a servant. 

But when Maxwell had gone, he went into Pay- 
ton’s bedroom, with that exaggerated sense that he 
must find him. All the thousand and one little things 
were there to remind him. He knew he was childish, 
but he still felt, breathlessly, Payton would appear. 

His eye lighted on Payton’s red felt slippers, a 
pang went through him. His heart had been stunned, 
but now it pained. Then he opened the cupboard 
door, an*d on the shelf he saw Payton’s brown bowler 
hat. A lump came into his throat. To Dante that 
hat meant the weak chain in Payton’s armor. It 
needed the psychology of affection to penetrate it, 
but underneath it, lay bound up with swagger, the 
name of “Nipper.” The hat on the shelf seemed to 
tell him that about the soul of pagan Payton lay the 
same dissatisfaction with life, the same recoil at its 
insufficiency, but with the strength of less strong men, 
a braggadocio to see it through. 


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The brown bowler hat smote Dante’s heart. He 
shut the door to the penetrating eye of Maxwell, 
and kneeling by the bed, buried his face in his hands. 

“When I get you back,” he said half aloud. 

“When I get you back ” then did not finfsh his 

sentence. 

Through the confused thoughts of his mind came 
the idea that he would go to see John’s mother. He 
got up and letting himself out quietly, walked to the 
narrow street where John’s mother had her little 
apartment. But arriving at the building, the impres- 
sion of time was renewed, and looking at his watch, 
he saw it was already after ten, and so in spite of his 
walk, he retraced his steps without seeing her. 

He returned to his flat, and as the evening grew 
old, he sat in Payton’s study, a victim to his thoughts. 
And he thought of an old fairy story that Giovanni 
used to tell him when he was a little boy, that life is 
a great wood, an enchanted forest, very green and 
pleasant to the eye, and that once upon a time a brave 
Knight, in journeying through the forest, grew tired 
and rested under a tree, and as he rested he saw 
strange shapes and shadows peering at him from 
between the branches, but because he was brave and 
without fear they did him no harm and he arrived 
safely at his destination. And then one day there 
came through the forest a cowardly Knight and when 
he saw the strange, grotesque shapes, he was afraid, 
and because of his fear, the terrible shapes drew 
nearer and tore him to pieces until he was destroyed. 
And as he grew older in telling his story to Dante, 


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his father used to call the forest the “Woods of 
Westermain.” And thinking of this, Dante thought 
of that other poem of Meredith’s — “The Three 
Singers to Young Blood.” 

The voice of the first singer is the voice of Nature, 
the voice that impels the bird to choose a mate and 
build a nest. And the second voice is the voice of 
worldly wisdom that advises a man to be very care- 
ful in his choice of a life companion, because to the 
better classes it is a matter of great consequence, and 
a wrong choice may quite wreck a man’s career. 
And the third voice is the voice of reckless passion. 
It is the voice of the siren that speaks perhaps not 
only to the ordinary types, but to the very choicest of 
the world’s souls. It is a voice that brings life a 
new color. It is splendor. It is enchantment, but 
he who listens to it is indeed bewitched, for it is “the 
cry that knows not law.” 

Now Meredith went on to say, that were the 
three voices to be united together in harmony, it 
would make a “music of the sun.” 

But that evening, Dante did not concern himself 
with George Meredith’s conclusion. The two first 
voices had for him no call. He had never cared to 
be contented with little and make a home for him- 
self. He had always scorned compromise. And the 
trimming of his sails to worldly wisdom was quite 
foreign to his nature. But the third voice was that 
evening the voice of Margherita. 

He knew that the strange shape most terrifying to 


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him in the forest of life was the dark form of loneli- 
ness. To meet the other terrifying shapes, poverty, 
hunger, illness — he had courage, but against loneli- 
ness he was a cowardly Knight, so the third voice 
whispered to him. “Never mind convention. Never 
mind the experience of generations that moral weak- 
ness is of great peril to the race. Take her. That 
will be heaven for you.” 

Why endure the little kindly hypocrisies of 
society? Margherita cared for him. Let Gabriele 
divorce her. Gabriele did not matter. Margherita, 
at that moment, seemed to him to be his soul, and he 
felt that with her, he might recover that old dream, 
(the dream of gray and green called Literature) 
that in words he might make a beautiful thing. 

He felt that he would look for some subject that 
had been dead for a long time and give it a new soul. 

He would be a very clever gardener and put into 
a well-known blossom a new and illusive perfume. 
He would take what he needed now, but only that he 
might give back to the world a new romance. Im- 
mortal, he would write over again in a better way 
that which was old. In the domain of art nothing is 
new, he could only capture and cultivate a pollen that 
had blown about the world on many winds. 

“Take, eat, that ye may be as gods, knowing good 
and evil.” So tempts the tempter, but it is given only 
to the old to know that the road to all artistic great- 
ness is the road of sincerity. 

Dante’s head sank among the pillows. To-morrow 


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Margherita was coming back. He fell asleep and 
dreamed he was playing cards with an old man with 
bushy eyebrows and crafty, blinking eyes, but when 
Dante came to play his hand, he found that all 
his cards were but pictures of Margherita. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


C APTAIN BELLONI, a young Italian officer, 
was riding in the steeplechase. He was at- 
tached to the Italian Embassy in Washington, 
and had been brought to Montreal for a short visit 
by Gabriele Borghese. Having distinguished him- 
self in the New York horse show the November 
before, on hearing of the steeplechase, he was 
anxious to take part, knowing that if he did not cover 
himself with glory in the officers’ race, he could prob- 
ably take the jumps as well, if not better, than any- 
one competing. 

Gabriele Borghese subscribed for a box In the 
grand-stand for the occasion. 

During the early part of the afternoon, Nina and 
Margherita walked about the lawn, Nina making 
rather loud remarks upon the appearance of some of 
the women, much to Margherita’s chagrin, as with a 
few of them, she had already become on friendly 
terms. As four-thirty approached, the hour set for 
the steeplechase, they went up Into their box to get 
a better view of the race, which Is so much more 
difficult to watch from the level. 

Two of the entries were scratched, and as the 
horses came out of the paddock, Margherita counted 
nine. She saw Captain BellonI on a gray cob dancing 


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along. She recognized a young man who had just 
passed out of the Military College, and then her 
searching eyes saw Dante following on a black mare. 
As he passed under the stand, he looked up to catch 
her eye, but the mare was pulling at the reins and 
started off, jumping from right to left, before Dante 
could find which was Margherita’s box. 

Margherita, who at four years old, had ridden a 
pony and understood horses thoroughly, could see 
that Dante did not seem to have complete control 
over his mare. The mare was excited and instead of 
being cool, Dante was deadly white and extremely 
nervous. Knowing that he had but lately learned to 
ride, Margherita had tried to dissuade him. Had 
not Captain Belloni asked him if he were riding, he 
would certainly not have entered, but he was sensi- 
tive that he was not a thorough-going sport, and 
when Belloni questioned him about the races, he first 
gave the impression he was taking part by accident, 
and then found himself committed to enter. 

The horses were restless and it was very difficult to 
get them into line. The glasses in the grand-stand 
went up and were laid down again many times. 
Then, just as someone remarked ‘‘They’re a long 
time in starting,” Margherita heard the cry, 
“They’re off I” 

Dante knew that the great thing in a race is to 
keep cool, but he had a bad start and when he found 
that he was behind, instead of letting the mare fol- 
low her own course, he urged her. The first jump 
was just opposite the grand-stand, and Margherita 


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saw him spur on the mare, and, once over the ditch, 
the pace seemed better on the level. At the second 
hurdle, the mare rose lightly in the air, and cleared it 
easily. The third jump had a ditch on the other side 
filled with water. Here the mount of the boy from 
the Military College stumbled and threw him on his 
head. It was just here that Dante was figuring to 
get control of his mare. At the sound of the crash, 
she made a movement with her ears and changed the 
measure of her pace. Dante pulled on the reins, but 
as he reached the fourth jump, the mare, out of time 
with her rider, leapt too soon, and caught the hurdle 
with her hind hoofs. 

From the grand-stand, Margherita saw Dante 
pitched over his mount’s head. 

At the moment that Dante fell, Gabriele came into 
the box from the rear. His attention was drawn to 
Margherita by the low cry she gave, and his gaze 
traveled to her face and concentrated upon her. She 
recovered herself almost immediately and Nina, 
noticing Borghese’s expression, came to her aid with 
some hurried comments on the race. Margherita 
raised her glasses and could see that Dante had 
picked himself up and was walking rather lamely in 
their direction. When she saw this, Margherita sank 
back in her chair as though in spite of herself, the ex- 
pression of relief escaped in a gesture, but Borghese 
stood at the back of the box, his arms crossed, his 
brows lowered, gazing at Margherita’s back, and in 
his face was the cruel expression of a boy who, by 
accident, has found where another hides his treasure. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


«< riceless,” said Margherita, “why don’t 
you unbend. I have never seen anyone more 
dreadfully unbending.” 

Margherita leaned back in her chair and laughed. 

This communication only had the effect of making 
Dante more uncomfortably stiff. He had come lately 
to have a profound belief in Margherita’s dramatic 
talent for stage management. She could allow a con- 
versation to drop when the need for keeping it up 
seemed alarmingly necessary. And from the moment 
Margherita showed a sign of dropping the conversa- 
tion, no doubt could long occur in the mind of a 
third person as to the possibility of continuing it. 
She had a delightful way of getting rid of tiresome 
people. Now what made Dante so unbending on 
this particular afternoon, was that knowing the light 
and airy possibilities of Margherita’s powers to 
maneuver, he expected great things of her, and on 
this particular afternoon she had failed to use them. 

Dante had a wonderful impression of dark eyes 
and dark hair and a clear, olive skin, but he hardened 
his heart and determined that it should make no 
impression on him. 

Margherita leaned back in her chair in a kind of 
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ecstasy. “Poor old Priceless,” she said, “so grumpy. 
It is no use being angry now,” she said pensively, 
“because the afternoon is over.” 

Dante fidgeted, lit a match and blew it out again. 
He put out his hand, and Margherita’s hand lay un- 
resistingly in his. 

“You don’t believe in me a bit,” she said. “Never 
mind, I will force you to — by manipulation. The fat 
Mr. Steel-trust I met at dinner last night assures me 
that ‘manipulation’ is the keynote of American 
finance. 

“Nina was immensely interested. She asked him 
if the American women manipulated as well as the 
men and if it was anything like massage. Mr. Steel- 
trust, who takes himself quite seriously, twigged that 
Nina was making fun of him, and withdrew his offer 
of a little oil-field in Louisiana. 

“You ought to collect Nina’s epigrams. Priceless. 
It would look well — ‘Epigrams by the Countess Ite, 
Edited by Dante Ricci.’ A black cover with asterisks 
of gold.” 

Margherita laughed, and its low music was so 
unfeignedly pleasing that Dante felt his wrath abat- 
ing. 

There was a pause, then Dante said, “It is Nina 
who makes you flippant, but it is rather expensive for 
the people who love you, especially on one of your 
last afternoons.” 

Margherita flushed a little. She was touched by 
his effort to meet her mood. 

“You had better smoke,” she said, “you are evi- 


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dently not going to drink your tea. It is very rash 
of you. You may not have tea much longer. I hear 
they are going to put a stop to It In England.” 

Dante had a vague idea that when Margherita 
was In this mood, the only thing for him to do was 
calmly to allow her to run the conversation in her 
own way. He lit a match and began to smoke, and 
tried to banish from his mind Margherita’s deter- 
mination of the afternoon, which had exhibited itself 
in keeping for nearly two hours a chance visitor, by 
making herself extremely fascinating. 

“I told you Nina and I had taken our passages,” 
she said presently. “We go on Saturday. Now 
don’t take it as If It were something dreadful,” she 
Interrupted, “because I shall come back. Granny is 
ill and Fitzmaurice cabled, so I must really go.” 

“I don’t like it,” said Dante stolidly. 

“I know,” said Margherita, smiling at his obsti- 
nacy. “You want to treat me like a SIstine Madonna 
with a perpetual adoration, but perpetual admiration 
Is a very perishable material and it would wear quite 
thin.” 

“Perhaps,” said Dante dubiously, “but the mood 
I like best is when you behave like a beautiful, shy 
butterfly and I am afraid to stir, or change the con- 
versation In case I should frighten you away. 

“You see, I am dreadfully in love with you,” he 
added with a laugh. 

“Tell me about It,” Margherita said, mollified. 
“What will you do when I go ?” 

“I have decided that,” Dante answered between 


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the puffs of his cigarette. “I have joined and I will 
get myself sent overseas as soon as I can.” 

Margherita seemed to have something to say and 
then to decide not to say it. 

When a man has an important thing to say, he 
says it, but when a woman has an important thing to 
say, she evades it, or at least she puts off the moment. 

“I heard from my friend, Payton,” said Dante. 
“He writes that the British are ceasing to be a fight- 
ing fringe with nothing behind it. With you gone, 
there is no temptation to keep me from the war.” 

It struck Margherita suddenly that life in war- 
time was uncertain and the forces that had been 
drawing her away from Dante suddenly turned and 
gathered strength in the opposite direction. 

“Talk to me. Priceless,” she said gently. “What 
will you do when I am gone ?” 

And Dante, who was learning at Margherita’s 
hand that to keep a woman’s attention, a man can 
never afford to be himself, passed his hand over his 
forehead as if to induce thought, and then arose and 
stood with his back to the mantlepiece. 

“My darling,” he said gently, “the force of my 
longing for you ought to be able to keep you from 
going.” 

“We have settled that,” said Margherita decid- 
edly. “I am going, but I shall come back.” 

Dante smiled doubtfully and again passed his hand 
over his forehead. 

“There was a chap at Oxford who, whenever any- 
one was out of sorts, always said that he had a 


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woman on his mind. In those days it amazed me 
and I thought it an unnecessary explanation. I 
believe now that not the explanation, but the fact is 
necessary. It is only through a woman a man finds 
himself.” 

Dante paused, then continued. 

“When you go, I shall have a black struggle with 
myself. I shall go to France and hope for a stray 
bullet, and when the war is over, if I don’t have the 
luck to get shot, I shall struggle against life for a 
time and in the end I shall submit to it. I shall sub- 
mit because it is hard to be always climbing up a 
stone wall. I shall submit because it is hard to be 
always kicking against the pricks, and I shall submit, 
too, a little for the reason that my body is growing 
old.” 

Margherita sat still. 

“The dark rages of a man’s youth pass,” Dante 
continued, “and when his ideals are down and life 
is utterly on his hands, the man, if he is an artist in 
his quiet moments, clutches back at the tension and 
the bright anguish of those early days, because art, 
painting, music, literature and poetry are nothing but 
the expression of emotion.” 

“Priceless,” said Margherita in a low voice, “you 
must fight on, you must never go down like that.” 

And because he knew that Margherita hated what 
she called the “down bucket,” Dante talked on a 
little more wildly, but on a higher level. 

“The last years of a man’s life are apt to be a little 
thin and pale and their developed limitations are 


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very obvious and genius, even a ghostly genius, is 
only at very tremendous expense. The world is full 
of mugwumps and the only chance of middle age is 
to be quite a big and important mugwump.” 

Margherita rose from her chair and nestled up to 
him. “What do mugwumps look like?” she asked, 
and a smile came into her face. 

Dante’s face brightened. “To begin with,” he 
said, “they lose their figures. They under-exercise 
and overeat, and then they get a little slow on the 
uptake because they never use their minds. They 
are dreadfully conventional because, you see, if they 
ever lost hold of the conventions, they mightn’t be 
agile enough to catch them again.” 

Margherita smiled contentedly. 

“We must never be mugwumps,” she said, “even 
when we are old.” 

Dante bent over her. 

“Oh, my darling, my darling,” he whispered. 


CHAPTER XXX 


M ARGHERITA had gone. 

The weeks succeeding her departure stood 
in Dante’s memory as something finite and 
unbearable, with, as he looked back, a memory of 
flowers in the sun, and as he looked forward, the 
quiver of tears. Life went brackish, and the effect 
of finality and decay was heightened by the falling 
leaves, by the bared branches of the trees and the 
bitter-sweet mood of autumn. Hardness sprang up 
in him and his grief went cold and dry. And the old 
obsession of his life appeared that loneliness was 
stalking him. 

It was a day in October, the leaves lay damply on 
the ground and the passing feet of the passer-by 
trampled them into formless blots upon the pave- 
ment. Dante left the barracks. He went down to 
see the bulletin board, because everybody had a feel- 
ing that the condition of the war was not very satis- 
factory. 

That was the beginning of the winter 1915-1916. 
And as he walked away from a none too satisfactory 
report, he had a curious impression of endless 
struggle, an impression of the struggle of capital and 
labor, and the other struggle, the other war, whose 
only equipment is instinct, the war of the sexes. 


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213 


His thoughts drove him and he walked quickly, as 
if he could in this manner escape from them. Pres- 
ently he heard the patter of feet behind him. He 
felt a pair of hands grasp his and a cold nose was 
thrust into his palm. 

He looked down and saw Pansy Dowden. 

With the putting on of his uniform, Pansy had 
suddenly developed a greater interest in him. 

'‘Hello! Uncle Danny,’’ she said, her little face 
looking up into his. 

“Hello! Pansy.” 

Pansy’s nurse had come up a little breathlessly and 
stood deprecating. 

“Will you come to the ‘Colored Gardens,’ Uncle 
Danny?” the small girl asked inquiringly. 

“Where, Pansy?” 

“The Colored Gardens,” came the immediate 
answer. 

“She means the college grounds, sir,” said the 
nurse. 

Whereat Miss Pansy stamped her foot. “I don’t,” 
she flashed. “They are not the college grounds, they 
are the Colored Gardens.” 

Dante gave a tug at one of Pansy’s curls. 

“Will you come. Uncle Danny?” she implored. 

“Not to-day.” 

Pansy held on to his hand and skipped up and 
down, singing — 


‘And they were married on the spot, 
With music and I don’t know what.’ 


214 the new world 

“That’s a song out of a story-book,” explained the 
nurse. 

“It isn’t, it is true,” cried Pansy frowningly. 

Suddenly she stopped jumping up and down. 
“Nurses are rubbishy,” she said. 

Dante laughed and holding her upper arms, he 
lifted her up and kissed her little freckled face. 
“That’s for punishment.” 

Pansy lowered her eyes. “Nurses are rubbishy,” 
she repeated. Then she took Dante’s hand and 
rubbed her cheek against it. “Will you come to the 
Colored Gardens, some day. Uncle Danny?” 

“I hope so. Pansy-face,” he said gently. “I hope 
so.” 

When Pansy had gone a step or two, she turned 
again. “They are the Colored Gardens,” she said 
defiantly. 

“Of course. Pansy-face. Things are what we 
think they are.” 

“Yes,” she repeated, “things are what we think 
they are.” 

As Dante walked on, he thought of old John, man- 
ifestly neglected in thought, and he remembered the 
night he got news of John’s death, his thoughts had 
been chiefly of Margherita. But still he had no prac- 
tical reaction, still he was glad he had never missed 
an opportunity of seeing her, even to recruit the 
reluctant moments of duty. 

He had a curious feeling that day that he had lost 
touch with life, that he had become a bystander. He 
felt that ultimately he would assume responsibilities, 


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Pansy, for instance, and do something constructive in 
a public-spirited way, but that now life would always 
be for him only half true. He tried to cheer himself 
with reconstruction and the idea of what he would 
do. And inevitably the chance meeting with Pansy 
cheered him. Lately he had been always on the 
defensive, but with Pansy there was no misunder- 
standing, she claimed him as a belonging. 

He heard from Payton that the troops were 
numerous and keen and the reliefs frequent. He 
would go soon now. And he began to see what men 
of all classes, of all ages, have seen, that duty is a 
kindly compensation for an abandoned dream. 

Duty is not splendid, nor satisfying. Even in its 
harvests, the heart may starve, but if a man is doing 
something for the benefit of the community it will 
react upon his private life. Because a man who 
meets an obligation has ceased to drift, and when a 
man in the face of personal disaster has ceased to 
drift, he has crossed one of the great crossroads of 
psychological life. In their souPs history, in the face 
of disaster what do human beings do? All of them 
fear, some of them hate, but few go out with indom- 
itable courage to meet the black battalions of the 
gods. On earth there is a life which is not quite our 
own, it moves this way and that, and it is constantly 
subordinated to outside influence. With admirable 
practicality is mingled a varied motion, but away 
from the horizontal line, beyond the many things 
which are nothing, lies the whole range of the soul. 


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Beyond the horizontal is the pulse and the heave of 
the things that are too wonderful to be explained. 

“Some day, some day,” says the Imp in the gar- 
den. 

“Why not?” whispers the heart. 

“Nevermore,” answers the soul. “Here nothing 
is eternal. Nothing is complete.” 

Dante walked along with a heavy tread. The 
trees stripped themselves of their leaves in the wind 
for their year’s romance was dead and the world was 
gray. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


I N the lives of those who lived it, the war will 
probably never be history. They may have 
broad theories about it, they may generalize 
about it, but it will always be too personal and tooj 
recent to attain the impartial plane of history. To ; 
the future generations the battlefields may become a : 
gigantic chart, a skeleton upon which to recapitulate 
a maneuver. In the cooling of years the fury will 
have abated, but to the present generation the battle- 
field maintains its reality; the shadows are alive, the 
flare is in the sky and from the caverns and the dark- 
ness rise the restless spirits of the dead. To be alone 
there would be too sinister, the death struggle is too 
recent. 

In the morning in the sunlight, a spectator might 
conjure advancing regiments — triumphs and glorious 
feats of the artillery — ^but at twilight it is with diffi- 
culty that the imagination surmounts great holes torn 
in the earth, the scuttling of rats and the shades of 
spirits who died too soon. And yet these gashes in 
the earth have witnessed a great heroism, a concen- 
trated essence of life unknown to those who boast a 
tranquil three score years and ten. Here was paid 
the price of philosophy and peace. Here was hell, 
that many might have heaven. 


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The generation of to-day is stupid. It sees fit to 
allow itself to be stupid. Imagine the measure of 
wings in the days of Napoleon, is it any larger 
to-day? The armies are more numerous, the pro- 
jectiles greater. Men fight under water and in the 
air. War is more prodigious, the battle line is longer. 
Yet again the ambitions of a ruler make a whirlwind 
of the crowd. This generation is stupid. The mind 
of its people cannot be penetrated by experience. We 
learn again in 1915 what as a race we learned in 
1815, that when the tide of human ambition rises 
too high in one quarter it is set back by the gods. 
Napoleon beat the enemy in squares. The armies of 
the Kaiser advanced in close formation. Napoleon 
was an artillery officer. The factories of Krupp 
worked day and night. Was there anything finer to- 
day than the spirit of the old guard at Waterloo, 
shouting “Long live the Emperor,” as they died? 

Is it only history casting her glamour of a hundred 
years over the Little Corporal, that makes his men 
more romantic, more compelling to the imagination, 
than any figure of these late days? Perhaps. And 
yet one misses the grand utterances, the flash of genius. 
The skies of the popular mind nowadays are over- 
cast. No one can belittle the modern spirit of hero- 
ism. Mutilated, crushed men have staggered on 
over the dead, with mortal wounds to pursue and 
complete, uncertain victory. There are heroes still, 
but at nightfall as one scanned the battlefield there 
was no great outstanding figure to gallop past and 
stir the imagination of a staggered, dizzy throng. In 


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other wars, there have been great leaders. In this 
there have been none. 

Someone in later days when the war’s history 
comes to be written, may remark upon this. And as 
he looks upon the torn soil which labor and the rains 
of years have equalized and sees in imagination the 
silhouettes of armies advancing, taking breath and 
advancing — of men crouching in the half shelter of 
uptorn trees — of outposts quietly waiting for certain 
death — as posterity stands and ruminates, it may 
realize something of the greatness of this army, for 
there are few men who cannot be inflamed by a great 
leader. It is invigorating to follow a romantic 
figure, but the army of these days was not so 
Inflamed. There was no vertigo. Bewildered, yet 
dogged, it waited for an indication to advance. War 
has its hideous features, treachery, rapine, the rob- 
bing of a corpse are some. It brutalizes and it con- 
dones evil. Men gamble with greasy cards. They 
steal each other’s sweethearts. But war has its beau- 
ties ; little fires that illuminate, little services between 
rough men in an area where death yawns. And one 
of its great beauties is the spirit of men who, fired 
by no divine incentive, whose imagination is not 
taken captive by any great general, still are capable 
of retreating and taking breath, and retreating, or 
standing day after day in mud and filth with courage 
and patience and endurance. 

Twilight was falling in France over a little village 
whose name has been obliterated by the censor. 
German egg bombs had been falling all day like 


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snowballs and much depended upon the supports 
because the front line was spent and held. 

Corporal Payton had nearly lost his life in a very 
gallant venture, having bayoneted single-handed the 
crew of a machine gun. He had also distinguished 
himself by taking to his lieutenant a captured map, 
which enabled the lieutenant to lead his men to the 
central telephone installation. There, twenty opera- 
tors were seized by Corporal Payton and two files 
of soldiers, who afterwards put the wires out of 
gear. 

The German barrage had created a zone through 
which it was practically impossible for unarmored 
troops to move. So as twilight fell the depleted bat- 
talions were holding their line, until under cover of 
the darkness they could be drawn off and a fresh 
battalion take their place. 

About two o’clock in the morning, two men 
stopped before the chaumiere of Ma-Ma Pitou. One 
man had broad shoulders, a red face and the expres- 
sion which comes from an energetic, stormy soul. 
War was to him what trade is to the Jew, it expanded 
his chest, it dilated his nostrils. 

The other man was thin, feeble, uncertain. If 
there had been a light he would have shivered at the 
sight of his own shadow standing at Ma-Ma Pitou’s 
door. 

Diametrically opposed as they were, they cher- 
ished one dream; they both wished to be distin- 
guished for bravery. 

Ma-Ma Pitou shuffled off her mattress in the 


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kitchen and unlocked the door. The two men passed 
into the kitchen. 

“Mother of God,” she said, “what an hour!” 

Corporal Payton put his helmet on the table. 
“Death is filthy,” he exclaimed. “We have left it 
behind. To-day the battle has raged, Ma-Ma Pitou. 
Twice I have earned a commission. The Boches 
have been so long in their dug-outs that they are 
being trained to avoid danger and they begin to shrink 
from it. Buried in their burrows they are worse off 
than you, Ma-Ma.” 

The old peasant smiled. “Mother of God,” she 
said, “I spent the day in the cellar.” 

Ma-Ma Pitou moved backwards and forwards 
getting two glasses, a bottle of red wine and some 
long thin loaves of bread. As she moved she carried 
on a monologue, something of this nature — 

“A commission, hein. That’s pretty good. So 
the Boche keeps in his hole, eh? Dirty dog. 
Canaille — business is dull. Three knocks at the door, 
but twice I am afraid to come up. It seems Mother 
Incotte heard a knock, opened the door, and there 
stood two big Boches. One cannot tell.” 

The two men sat down at the table. 

“A commission. That’s pretty good, eh? But the 
other poilu, what has he got?” 

Private Wickfield took his arm from out of its 
resting place between the buttons of his coat. He 
unwound a bandage which was saturated with blood. 
Above his wrist a knot had been tightly tied. His 
hand had been quite blown away. 


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Corporal Payton stood up and raised his glass. 
“The postmaster-general deserves a new appoint- 
ment,” he said. 

And Wickfield had a vague idea that he had heard 
something like this before. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


D ante had seen Margherita in London. 
They had gone to a play and after the play 
they had dropped into a night club and got 
an impression of clothes and jewelry and champagne 
and cigars. There were very few unoccupied chairs, 
and they had difficulty in getting a table, and as soon 
as they were seated an idea crept into Dante’s mind 
that he could not bear Margherita to be there. 

“No,” objected Margherita at his suggestion, “I 
won’t go away yet. I’ve only just come.” 

Dante was in possession of a new determination. 
He was waiting for an opportunity to suggest it. He 
did not understand the moods and changes that over- 
take the feminine mind, but something in his com- 
position had learned by experience that all moments 
were not equally propitious to make a suggestion and 
it was clear as day to him that he got on better when 
he subdued his own inclinations and followed Mar- 
gherita’s mood. 

Margherita had known — all evening — that some- 
thing was coming. And she embarked upon a con- 
versation and talked very hard. 

“I’ve improved you very much. Priceless,” she 
said turning to him. “You used to wear your hair 
too long. And your hopes and fears a little too 


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long. You used to be altogether a little out of 
drawing, but now you are tremendously improved.” 

“Margherita,” Dante responded, knocking the end 
of his cigarette on his plate, “you are quite right 
You have changed me. From being very indefinite 
and vague, I have become very definite and clear, and 
particularly so about one thing. My regiment may 
go any day. And over there I may get killed, but if 
I don’t — if I come back — will you marry me ? It is 
impossible to go on like this.” 

Dante sat quite still looking at his plate. Pur- 
posely he had not mentioned the word “divorce,” 
but he meant it and he knew that Margherita, with 
her quickness, knew that he meant it. All the ideas 
she had ever expressed upon the subject rushed back 
to Dante before he raised his eyes. 

Margherita spoke in a perfectly even voice. “I 
know you have been thinking of that, Priceless. I 
have known it all evening.” 

By the light of the silver candle sticks on the table 
her dark eyes seemed suddenly alive. 

“If love means anything ” Dante interrupted. 

“You don’t understand England,” she said, play- 
ing with her spoon. “If it were only I, but it is 
Granny, and Granny is England, and the place and 
the family and the things that were before I was.” 

Dante leaned forward over his folded arms. And 
Margherita raised her chin in the air, with that odd, 
sweeping gesture. 

“You see it is like this. No member of Granny’s 
family has ever done anything to bring scandal upon 


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225 


her name, to make her family talked about. We 
have been very proud that none of us has ever run 
away, none of us has been dishonorable, openly,” 
she added under her breath. That was what Mar- 
gherita said, but what her eyes said to Dante was — 
“Look at me, look at me, I have beauty — I have 
poise — I have intelligence — I have everything that 
you admire and long for on earth, and I am not for 
you.” The barriers could not be broken down. As 
our desires grow beyond our control, we begin to 
know something of their insistency. Dante’s mind 
halted for a little. And Margherita sat watching 
the dancing, but she did not rest her chin on her 
hand. She kept her head high as if to prevent any 
thought that could penetrate and bring her to the 
level of those who had behind their actions no idea, 
but their own pleasure, and Dante knew when a 
thought frightened her, his only chance was to be 
very quiet with her until she had confidence that he 
would not approach it again. Youth grows wise so 
quickly when love depends upon it. 

The stars were shining as they drove home. Dante 
took Margherita’s hand and laid his cheek against it, 
but her hand might have been made of marble, and 
he felt her face was turned away. This was one of 
her moods — the one that he dreaded most — when 
she was away from him in spirit, like a bird who has 
opened the door and flown from its cage. 

“I count my moments with you like a miser,” he 
said passionately. “They are nearly gone.” 

Margherita moved a little away from him. 


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‘T don’t want to keep you always loitering beside 
me,” she said. “You must have ambition. Your 
life must go on.” 

That stabbed Dante to the heart. His eyes fol- 
lowed the road of the taxi. Over that pathway night 
after night went the men who had leave, the men 
snatching a few hours of luxury from No Man’s 
Land. The men whose one idea was to have a warm 
bath, silk underclothes, a good dinner, and a little 
companionship, a little tenderness, to enable them to 
forget. East and west, night after night over Pic- 
cadilly, the taxis went past Hyde Park — past Green 
Park, carrying an ever changing throng. And above 
these men seeking relaxation, only seeking it even 
more desperately because death sounded on still 
nights across the channel from the echo of the guns, 
twinkled in the high shadows the trembling stars. 
Dante looked at the taxis moving east and west and 
across his lips went a bitter smile. 

“There can be no great art that is only from the 
brain,” he said in answer to Margherita’s statement. 
“There must be emotion, there must be experience.” 

When Dante parted from Margherita that even- 
ing, he kissed her. She held up her cheek. And her 
face was cool like moonlight, as if neither airless 
rooms, nor disturbing thoughts could mar its soft- 
ness. 

Back in his rooms at the Carlton, he buried his 
face in his pillow. The alarm came that the “Zeps” 
were out and guests were to go into the corridor for 
safety, but Dante locked his door and went back to 


THE NEW WORLD 227 

bed, for love, like an eagle, was tearing the flesh of 
his heart. 

The next morning as Dante made his way to the 
cab that was to take him to the station, coming 
through the traffic of the crowded street he saw a 
familiar figure. He waited before he quite realized 
who it was, otherwise he would have stepped into his 
cab and avoided the meeting. 

‘‘Well,” said Father Morot, coming up to him. 
“It is the young Canadian.” 

Dante felt from his eyes that although his words 
were friendly, he was antagonistic. 

“You will be seeing our friends at Foto,” sug- 
gested Father Morot. 

Dante looked Father Morot full in the face. “In 
ten days I am leaving for France,” he said. “I do 
not get leave before.” 

Father Morot raised his eyebrows. “Life will be 
so much more glissee, so much more easy for you 
when you have learned to meet her half way. You 
will get on much better when you learn to compro- 
mise,” the priest said smiling. 

Dante’s heart beat a little quickly. He guessed 
rather shrewdly that Father Morot had written from 
Canada to Lady Hopetoune and that the result of 
that letter had been Lady Hopetoune’s feigned ill- 
ness and Margherita’s return. And he felt that 
Father Morot’s little burning eyes looking him 
through and through were counseling him to take 
what he could of life, before, whuff — whuff — his soul 
was blown out by the guns. 


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Father Morot watched him narrowly, his face was 
a mask counseling a ‘‘temperate moderation.^’ 

Dante shrugged his shoulders. 

“Then I shall never get on,” he said, “because I 
could never compromise.” 

Father Morot thrust out his lower lip. Dante got 
into his cab. 

Later, Dante wondered why Father Morot had 
seemed so antagonistic to him from the first, and he 
came to the conclusion that it was not so much on the 
grounds of religious principles, as because of the fact 
that they both were Canadians. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


^FTER Dante had gone, Margherita, who had 
been staying in town with Nina, returned to 
Foto to be with her grandmother. These 
last years had aged Lady Hopetoune. She showed it 
in a variety of ways, and one was that as she walked 
on the terrace to take her daily constitutional, she 
paused quite frequently and leaned upon her cane. 
If there is a type produced by every occupation, there 
is certainly a type produced by every stratum. Aris- 
tocracy may not be an exact science, but the pure 
example of it in the days of war showed the same 
signs and the same effort to cover those signs of 
anxiety that the national footholds were loosened. 
The impression her grandmother produced on Mar- 
gherita was the impression of one who had received 
a wound and tries to hide it. Sometimes as they sat 
together knitting, Margherita could feel her grand- 
mother’s glance directed to her. In spite of the 
immense difference in their temperaments, there was 
a likeness of point of view between the two, perhaps 
one might almost say an understanding. Without 
consulting each other about a subject, each could 
often tell exactly the other’s opinion. And in her 
cold, dignified way, on most matters. Lady Hope- 
toune extended to Margherita her approval. But 


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this visit ascribing little value to her own importance 
in her grandmother’s eyes as she did, in the face of 
the war and Fitzmaurice’s career, the two subjects of 
most importance, Margherita could discern a certain 
interest mainly directed to herself, and with that 
understanding of her grandmother’s point of view if 
she was correct in guessing the reason of this interest, 
she was also correct in guessing her grandmother’s 
attitude of mind — Charming, mysterious, loving 
Margherita with her Latin temperament, lived in 
those Anglo-Saxon surroundings, flying in those days 
nature’s tender signals, because she had very lately 
walked in an enchanted land. Looking up over her 
knitting needles Lady Hopetoune sometimes sur- 
prised a softness in Margherita’s dark, wonderful 
eyes, a melting expression that dispelled like a mist 
at a hint of detection. Involuntarily and uncon- 
sciously, Margherita was desperately careful of her 
secret. She did not know that upstairs in her grand- 
mother’s writing case were two letters, one written 
from Father Morot from Canada in the capacity of 
a would-be Father confessor, and the other from 
Gabriele Borghese, the diplomat, knowing that Lady 
Hopetoune held the family honor dear. Over her 
knitting needles Lady Hopetoune watched, and the 
thoughts she knitted In with the stitches were these — 
“Yes, there are times when nature and not man, 

rules ” click. “The only possible terms in life 

for women of our cast are to follow the conventions, 

to follow them blindly ” click, click. “Gabriele 

is not congenial, but I do not Believe in these des- 


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231 


perate passions ” click, click. “How lovely her 

face Is, and how gentle she Is with me. I must be 
wise in my behavior,” click, click. “I am a distant 

woman, but I must appeal to her affection ” 

click, click, click, click. 

And the thoughts Margherita knitted with her 
stitches, were — “Dear Granny, how transparent her 
hands are. She is aging so quickly now. I wonder 
if she loved Grandfather. I wonder if her heart 
beat and her hand telegraphed messages to his. No 
one knows what Granny feels.” 

Lady Hopetoune turned a row, and began to speak 
— “I am very proud of you, Margherita,” she said 
quietly. “You have changed in many ways for the 
better since you married. When you were a child, I 
used to be afraid of your impulsive nature. In the 
life of a woman is required much restraint.” 

Margherita looked at her grandmother a little 
wistfully. Lady Hopetoune continued — 

“As you grow older you will realize that to have 
controlled your impulses and to have given no one 
the right to speak in a derogatory way of any of your 
actions, is part of the prestige of the class to which 
you belong. Life has its zest, but in age the greatest 
triumph is to be above reproach. I am old, child. I 
feel my age more day by day. This war and its con- 
stant danger to Fitzmaurice have aged me. No, 
no,” she contradicted Margherita’s denial. “I am 
an old woman, but I am arrogant in the extreme and 
it Is the great solacing thought of my old age,” her 
voice became a little loud and tremulous, “that the 


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ideals of my life will be carried on by my two grand- 
children, you and Fitzmaurice.” 

Margherita was moved by this appeal, for in her 
nature, too, lay the same claim to the good opinion 
of the world, and she was moved by the affection she 
had for the proud little figure sitting erect in her 
chair, that time was weakening so quickly. She 
looked older than she really was. 

At the end of her row. Lady Hopetoune ventured 
a glance. One idea alone possessed her. “If I can 
arouse her pity and tenderness for me, even at the 
expense of her own happiness, she will never hurt 
me,” she thought. 

“It is late, dear,” Margherita said appealingly. 
“Don’t you think you had better go to bed?” 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


T he beginning of 1916 saw the outlook from 
the Allies’ point of view as far from satisfac- 
tory. In the opening of the summer campaign, 
however, the Russians found a second wind. The 
French had been gallantly defending the fortress of 
Verdun since the last days of February. 

Writing to Dante about the end of August, Payton 
betrayed the fact that the overture of the German 
soldier was better than his performance. And he 
stated that the ascendency in morale was passing 
from one side to the other. Payton was on fine 
terms with life In those days. He wrote that if the 
war were not made for him, at least he was made for 
the war. In September he sent Dante a special mes- 
sage to say that his commission was won. The bombs 
plowed furrows in the land, and Payton advanced 
and shouted orders and planned; great with all the 
grandeur that defies death. 

“Let us not exaggerate,” he wrote. “To fire into 
a flight of wild duck is sport, but to make a sys- 
tematic examination of a dug-out Is greater sport. 
One gives a summons at the mouth of a burrow, then 
a Mills bomb, and out of the orifice come frightened, 
bleeding men. Yesterday we cleaned up some of the 


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Reserve Bavarians. They were thin, unshaven, and 
terrified.” 

And again he wrote — “The Germans are such stuff 
as thieves are made of, the Crown Prince has been 
pilfering again.” 

Just before this time, Payton had been to Paris on 
leave and he described a service of general interces- 
sion at Saint Etienne-du-Mont, in front of the shrine 
where the patron saint of Paris lies. Payton and the 
Beatitudes, that was extraordinary. Payton march- 
ing with the human race. Payton the Pagan, pro- 
gressing with his generation to the steps of St. 
Etienne-du-Mont. It was a strange impression. 
Then the gulf closed over him. 

Then came an engagement in which Payton was 
reported missing. A German prisoner was sent back 
for a report of the missing. The Germans acted 
very well and a note was pinned to the wire, but 
Payton’s name was not among those accounted for. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


D ante was in London on leave. He had 
been to France, had gained a clear idea of 
actual warfare and also a touch of pneu- 
monia, and now, a little bewildered, out of hospital, 
he was still on leave. There were fierce memories 
now on his horizon. He had inhaled the effluvia of 
advancing death, and it was intangible to him like a 
dream of poisonous flowers. 

Do what he would, his thoughts ran upon the war, 
because now he knew exactly what the men did. He 
knew the breakfast they eat. He knew the feeling of 
a dirty-wet shirt. And he knew the look of a bomb 
as it bursts not far away. He knew exactly how war 
came to men and how it affected them. 

It was when he was on leave that Dante heard 
that Payton was missing and reported dead. He 
took the letter, it came from Wickfield, and re-read 
it. He tok his cap and went down into the Hay- 
market. Wickfield said it had been uncertain, but 
now it seemed sure. Dante walked and walked until 
worn out, he sat down on a bench in Green Park. 
He sat there for a long time, then he found himself 
looking at the palm of his hand, and saying — “Just 
so much and no more. When a man gains one friend 
he loses another.” 


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For hours he sat there, head down, his eyes on the 
path and from time to time he looked at his hand, as 
if somehow that could explain his loss. Then he 
arose and walked down Pall Mall back to the Carl- 
ton. His habit of mind swung back on the old pen- 
dulum. He sat down and took out his notebook. 
Thoughts chased themselves through his brain and 
he felt that destiny was near. He had not written 
anything for five years and he gazed at the paper, 
but no words came. There is will in thought, there 
is none in poetry. It comes from the darkness like a 
bird, or it refuses to come. If it is forced, it is not 
poetry. The sun was setting and the room grew 
dark. “I’ll write about Death,” he said. He wrote 
a little and he wrote “Easter.” He got up and went 
to the window, the day was closing in. Up in the 
sky, he saw a tiny speck, it moved with a sweep like a 
bird. It looked like a bird, it was probably an air- 
plane. He went back to the table and wrote — 

Death and the song of some late lark. 

Pressing his breast upon the evening sky 
Singing of life and of the falling dark. 

And thoughts that sear the heart when loved ones 
die. 

Death with light lilies flung upon the morn, 

Of some far Easter with the winter o’er. 

When limbs stiff stretched anew with life are born 
To walk in chosen fields and die no more. 


THE NEW WORLD 237 

He read it over. His muse eluded him. In 
default of a masterpiece he tore it up. His grief was 
too new, his art grown rusty. The bird would not 
fly in out of the dark. He still had fever. He was 
hot. He opened the window and up came the roar 
of life that is London. The roar that has gone 
on for generations and will go on for genera- 
tions. The roar that is fed from the ebb and 
flow of the life of men. And he thought of 
it as a sea, that is only navigable to the strong. 
And he thought of art, the great chimera, the un- 
fathomable Sphinx who sits by the sands of time with 
her profound riddle. And it came to him that all 
artists — not messy little Bohemians, but artists who 
are sincere — are but the arteries of thought — the 
voices of the spirit of the world. And it seemed — 
it seemed that the greater the artist, the less he has 
any happiness of his own, the less he has any life of 
his own. Above the roar of London rises not riches, 
nor power, nor vain glory, but the eternal thoughts 
of the great dead. Dante looked down into the 
street and he saw men moving like little shadows. 
He looked up at the clouds drifting across the sky. 
Then he shut the window, and crossing the room, 
threw himself on the bed. “It is a long way,’’ he 
said, burying his face in his arms. “It is a long 
way.” And tired by his walk, he fell asleep. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


F ITZ MAURICE was sitting in his study in 
Grosvenor Square. He had been writing a let- 
ter, and as he sealed it, he glanced at the clock 
over the mantlepiece. It was five minutes to four. 
In five minutes Margherita ought to be there. He 
heard the rings drawn over the curtain rod in the 
doorway. 

“Ah, Pm glad you’ve come,” he said as he moved 
up a chair. “I have to be at the War Office at a 
quarter past four, and I have something to say to you 
before I go.” 

“What is it?” said Margherita, taking off her 
coat and dropping into the chair he had put ready. 
“You are so mysterious it is quite unlike you.” 
Fitzmaurice stood on the hearth rug. 

“It is about Ricci,” he began — “I haven’t told any- 
one, but he has been here with me for a week. He 
stumbled in here one evening, he had been sent home 
on leave. He seemed feverish and ill. I kept him 
to dinner. He talked quite brilliantly and seemed 
anxious to keep me from asking how he was, but I 
noticed he ate no dinner and from time to time, he 
pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and dried 
his lips. After dinner we came in here — and still he 
sat bolt upright in his chair talking excitedly. I had 
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239 


to go out for half an hour and asked him to wait. 
When I returned he had fallen asleep in his chair. 
It gave me an opportunity to pull the handkerchief 
out of his pocket, and I saw that where he had been 
touching his lips, there were marks of blood.” 

Margherita gave a little start. 

After a minute, Fitzmaurice said, “He is still here. 
He has had a hemorrhage of the lungs and is rather 
ill.” 

“Fitzmaurice,” said Margherita after another 
pause, “did he tell you about me?” 

“No, the doctor gave him some drug to put him to 
sleep. Instead of putting him to sleep, it sent him 
rather off his head. I sat up with him that night, and 
what I heard, dear, was rather to the old chap’s 
credit.” 

Margherita looked up quickly. 

“But you sent for me,” she asked, looking up at 
him. 

“Yes,” said Fitzmaurice gravely. “I am getting 
Ricci sent back to Canada. The War Office is giving 
him an appointment which will be a light job and yet 
make him feel himself useful and not too much at 
loose ends.” 

“Am I to see him?” 

Fitzmaurice nodded. “Ricci doesn’t know. It is a 
surprise.” 

Margherita stood up and slipped her arm through 
her cousin’s. “What would Granny say?” she said 
with a laugh. 

Fitzmaurice made no comment. 


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Margherita reflected. ‘T came up to town this 
morning. Oh my way here, I had luncheon 
with Nina.” Margherita’s face suddenly softened. 
“Maury, take Nina out to dinner to-niglit,” she said 
with a questioning look at him. 

Fitzmaurice looked a trifle puzzled. 

“It won’t hurt your prestige, and they won’t put it 
in the Times 

“But what makes you think ” Fitzmaurice did 

not finish his sentence. 

“My anterior life,” said Margherita with an air 
of conviction. “Instinct.” She gathered her cloak 
in her arms. “Where is he ?” 

“In my room.” 

Half way up the stairs, Margherita called back. 
“Maury.” 

“Yes, dear.” 

“To-night,” she gave a low laugh, and nodded her 
head. “Treat Nina as you treat Granny. You are 
always so loving to Granny.” 

Fitzmaurice smiled his quiet, restrained smile. 

It was the month of November. Dressed in silk 
pajamas covered by a silk dressing gown, Dante was 
lying on the sofa in Fitzmaurice’s room. It was cold, 
but England’s coal supply was needed for war pur- 
poses and there was no fire. So as the afternoon 
drew in and the room became darker, he pulled a rug 
over himself and fell asleep. 

Margherita came softly into the room. The door 
was open. She put her coat on the bed and went 


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241 

over to the sofa without speaking. Then she real- 
ized that Dante was asleep. 

When a being who is dear to us is ill and we look 
down upon him asleep, our look often sees something 
in him that we did not see before. 

Looking down upon him, Margherita saw for the 
first time, the trait that had won for Dante all his 
friends on his way through life — Crathern, Payton, 
John Dowden, Fitzmaurice, one and all had been 
drawn to him by the sharp line of his chin, the line 
that bespoke a mingling of youth and courage. 

It seemed to say that he knew that life was simple, 
but that he found it hard. And bending over him, 
thinner and paler as he was, Margherita saw the 
marks that study and loneliness had left upon him. 
She saw how fine looking he was. And Margherita 
Borghese knelt down, and putting her arm under his 
head, drew him to rest against her. 

God allots the lives of men and women, and some- 
times when one of his souls gets trodden to the 
ground, He uses a strangely human piece of happi- 
ness to raise it up. 

Love has been considered from every aspect. It 
covers a great area. It has wide meanings. It has been 
considered from the point of view of repression and 
gratification alike, and it seems fairly conclusive that 
when a human being comes out from the chain of its 
mysterious forces, he is either disfigured with shame, 
or transfigured by passion. Love is not messy. It is 
not surreptitious. It does not kiss behind doors, or 
hold hands in the darkness. It is not fidelity founded 


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on infidelity. Love’s wings are wide. Its flight is 
high. It is a madness, but it is a madness that lifts 
among the stars. 

The chimes of Westminster rang six. Dante put 
up his hand and stroked Margherita’s throat just 
under her chin. 

“Could one have ever guessed,” he asked, “that 
such happiness were possible?” He put his head 
back on her arm and smiled up into her face. He 
knew she liked him to be funny, so he tried to say 
something that would amuse her. And she saw his 
effort and laid her cheek against his forehead. “You 
are so improved, dear,” was all she could say after a 
pause. “You are funny and good looking and 
human.” 

He turned his face towards her and smiled, and 
with a sudden impulse, Margherita bent down and 
kissed him. 

“I want you. I want you,” he said brokenly. 
“What does conventionality matter, what do prin- 
ciples matter?” 

A little quiver ran over Margherita’s face. “I 
couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t. I have held my 
head high. I wouldn’t dare.” 

“What does public opinion matter. I want you,” 
he said, and his voice was a sob. 

Dante buried his face on her knee, and Mar- 
gherita rested her hand on his hair. Her eyes were 
dark now, her voice very low with a thrill in it. Was 
she softening? Dante wondered. For a moment 
it seemed as if she were giving in. Then some 


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243 

thought came to her mind. Dante felt It In the hand 
on his head. 

“If it were only myself ’’ the hand on Dante’s 

head twitched, “but it is Granny.” 

Never had she been so gentle to him. Never had 
her womanhood been so on fire. This was what he 
had felt in her always, this was what he had never 
seen until now. Anything of him that had remained 
outside her subjugation was hers now and forever. 

“It’s Granny,” she whispered. “If I did that. It 
would kill Granny. Granny has taken the war so 
hard. She is so changed. You would hardly know 
her. Granny has had two great interests in her life. 
One dependent on the other, one part of the other. 
The place and Fitzmaurice. She loves Foto and she 
wants Fitzmaurice to be an English statesman. They 
are like two branches of a tree that have grown to- 
gether. Every time our armies retreat. Granny gets 
a little older, a little more shaky, but she is still cling- 
ing desperately to her inherited pride. One has not 
the right to hurt anyone with such a terror hanging 
over them. If Fitzmaurice were killed, the place 
would go to another branch of the family. Fitz- 
maurice understands Granny’s suffering. He Is gentle 

with her and loving — ^llke ” again Margherlta’s 

hand twitched — “you would be to me.” 

Dante lay quite still, but his right hand groped for 
Margherita’s free hand. 

“You see, dear, I couldn’t,” she whispered. 

“I see,” Dante answered, “I see.” 

So they clung silently to each other. 


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Margherlta got up from the sofa. “Now, darling, 
Tm going,” she said hastily. “I have to take the six- 
forty from Paddington.” 

Dante struggled to his feet. He was wearing a 
pair of Fitzmaurice’s pumps and one fell off and 
made him confused, because he was still self-con- 
scious. 

He held Margherita’s coat. It was rather a won- 
derful coat of soft fur, with a collar of Kolinsky 
which was becoming to her beautiful face. Her eyes 
were glowing as they did when she was excited, or 
sorry. 

“I love your beauty,” Dante said. “I love your 
beauty.” 

She took both his hands, and drawing herself 
away from him, swung his arms backwards and for- 
wards. 

“What will you do?” she asked with emotion. 
“What will you do?” 

Dante swallowed the lump in his throat. “I ” 

he said, and in spite of himself his “I ” was 

stumbling and broken. “All my life I have only 
cared for two things. One is you — and the other is : 
some day before I die, to make with words one 
beautiful thing. I would like it to be very simple, 
and I would like to appeal to all classes as something 
that is true.” 

She dropped his hands and he put his arms around 
her and kissed her good-by. 

At the door, she paused. 

“You won’t let life drive you down?” 


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“No/’ he said thickly. 

“And some day I shall hear that you have done 
wonderful things.” 

Dante straightened himself. The knife was in his 
heart and Margherita was driving it very hard. 

“Yes,” he said watching her, “some day you will 
hear — that I have done wonderful things.” 

If Margherita had recognized it, she would have 
realized that as Dante stood there, he looked very 
like his Father, Giovanni; but it was a Giovanni who 
had gained something in the implacable march of 
time. A Giovanni who would not be borne down by 
the swarming, crushing hurricane of life. 

Dante held out his arms. “Oh I my darling, my 
darling!” he whispered. 

But his arms were empty — Margherita had gone. 



PART FOUR 


DANTE’S MESSAGE 

What hast thou found in the Spring, to follow? 
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? 
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? 

— Itylus. 



t 



CHAPTER XXXVII 


T he train roared through the green country, 
between the snake fences and past Val Morin, 
past Shaw Bridge, into St. Jerome. 

A squall of rain had just struck the country and as 
Dante looked out of the window, he could- see 
glimpses of the road with here and there a motor 
struggling on a greasy hill. As he swayed to and 
fro in his chair in the Pullman car, he retraced the 
events of the past twelve months. His stormy 
journey from England; his arrival in Canada; his 
futile effort to overtake the job procured for him by 
Fitzmaurice, futile because of his health; his resigna- 
tion from the Pulp Company, and then his forced 
stay in the mountains. These last months had been a 
state of being. His old philosophy of doing, where 
was it? Like so many others, his philosophy had 
remained a philosophy, not a means to an end. Well, 
his health was restored now. He reached out his 
hand and touched the wood of the window sill, then 
smiled at his own superstition. Margherita had 
taught him that. Margherita, three thousand miles 
away. In spite of the distance, his love for her had 
broadened and deepened as love will on the discipline 
of solitude. 


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Borghese had made an important move during 
this last year. He was attached to the Italian Em- 
bassy in London, but much to his surprise and the 
surprise of some of her friends, Margherita had not 
joined him, but had stayed on at Foto, giving as an 
excuse her grandmother’s health. 

At St. Jerome, the sun came out and threw slant- 
ing shadows on the grass, where the rain drops 
sparkled. Dante got out and went into the restau- 
rant to get a doughnut and a cup of coffee. He 
walked down to the bend of the road and saw some 
young lambs gamboling near their mothers. Some 
children were playing in the mud with bare feet. 
Across the railway track some cattle lowed in the 
field. He threw back his shoulders and returned to 
the train. Yes, he was cured. He felt well. 

As the train continued its journey, Dante resumed 
his reflections. His affairs would need some atten- 
tion. He had now only the income left from his 
father, and the money that Payton had willed him, 
with which he maintained the flat according to Pay- 
ton’s wish, that he keep on Maxwell. He had not 
definitely decided on the role he would choose for him- 
fself. He had told himself many truths during these last 
months. To coerce people into taking a humble view 
of themselves perhaps, there is nothing so efficacious 
as an illness. His illness might have had a very 
souring effect upon his nature by chilling it, but from 
the opposite point of his misfortune smiled his mem- 
ory of Margherita. And these months that he lay 
gauging his own possibilities, he was waiting and 


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251 


watching for the time when his returned health 
would help him and would enable him to crystallize 
on the stand that he meant to take in life. 

He saw his Father in himself, his Father’s love of 
the beautiful, his Father’s love of the intellectual, and 
his Father’s effort to slip away from everything that 
was unpleasant. And during his illness he had seen 
traces of his Mother in himself. In his absolute 
determination to recover, in his strict adherence to 
the medical routine, there were unmistakable evi- 
dences of Helena’s tenacity. And now although he 
had not decided too rigidly on his definite role, he 
knew what he wanted. He would write his book, of 
course, that was inevitable, but just what point he 
would take, still lay dark in the deep pool of his 
mind. “A man need only keep his aim before him, 
and he will get what he wants,” he thought. 

At one time, he thought of going back to his old 
home, of seeing the old nest again, of planting his 
feet on the known soil, but he put the idea from him, 
he could work better in town in touch with people 
and the problems of life. 

So as the train came down from the mountains, 
through the green fields to the city, he was thinking 
that his novitiate was at an end, the time of his 
preparation was over, that if there was any fire in his 
soul, any knowledge that would break down the 
barriers between man and man, any thought in his 
mind that could help to shape the course of existence, 
or fill the hungry needs of life, now was the time for 
him to gird his loins and verify what he had always 


252 THE NEW WORLD 

felt rather than known to be lying buried in his own 
heart. 

And in his reverie he wondered why he was at his 
old mental processes again. Why? Why? These 
thoughts had robbed his childhood of gladness. Why 
couldn’t he leave the problems of life alone and let 
the world go by, and stop tracing the patterns of the 
human race. Why bother about the little follies and 
virtues and developments of the race. Life was just 
a crazy quilt of pieces sewn together to cover the 
nakedness of the soul. Whatever the size and texture 
and color of the pieces, once wielded together, you 
had your covering, your crazy quilt. And yet under 
all the crazy quilts, there is only one soul, one model, 
because the original protoplasm of all life is the 
same, and when you have traced out the meaning of 
one soul, there is nothing very new in human nature, 
because you have the key to the model of the pattern 
of the world. Why know too much? Why bother 
about the problems of life like an old hen who sits 
on its eggs that never come out? A little groping 
for truth when we are young. A little longing for 
the beauty and fullness of life, and then tie these 
things up in a neat little package and put them away, 
and travel like all the world, along one trail. If you 
cannot be happy, do not be miserable. If you cannot 
marry for love, sell yourself for a ring and a new 
name. Up and down, up and down the trail; well 
dressed and successful goes Compromise, untroubled. 
It has not even a weary look, because it has never 
expected anything more than it has. Disillusion has 


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253 


a charm of its own. It is weary, and in its face is a 
story. But Compromise has no charm, it has just 
success and good clothes. It is all very well to have 
ideals and theories, but you must not carry them into 
life. Keep to the trail. It has no thorns. It has no 
pitfalls. It has no radiance. It has no glory, but the 
path is easy and it is safe. 

Why bother? Why try to discover the meaning 
of human life through reason? By some strange 
mental trick whenever Dante thought of some ideal 
that he wanted to measure up to, something that he 
was emotionally capable of, but intellectually not, he 
saw again in memory the gargoyle at the foot of 
Mrs. Bloom’s staircase, the wooden monster with a 
wide mouth and a lifted smile. 


I 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


F or the first few weeks after his arrival in 
town, Dante devoted himself for a couple of 
hours daily to the arranging of his affairs. The 
rest of the day he spent either at the public library, 
looking up data, or else at home in Payton’s “brown 
study” getting his notes together and preparing to 
begin. But life was sending in her bills. His 
extreme attachments, his friendship with Payton and 
his interest in Margherita had been sufficient. He 
had a good many of what might be called acquaint- 
ances, but no friends. There were people whom he 
could invite to dinner, with whom he could discuss 
the matters of the day, but between whom and him- 
self lay impassable barriers. Dreaming over his 
book. Annoyed with it, because it would not come to 
life. Discouraged with it because the desired effect 
eluded him. He opened a letter in a handwriting 
he did not recognize. It was from Nina. “Looking 
him up on paper,” but saying amongst other less im- 
portant news, that Margherita had not gone back to 
Borghese. 

“She cannot love me, that is certain,” he thought, 
walking up and down the room with an unsteady 
step. 

She knew that he suffered and had held out to him 


254 


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255 

the thought that she would be with her grandmother, 
not with Gabriele. 

“It is impossible to live like this. I am tormented ; 
and what for?” he asked himself. “The chance that 
I may do a bit of good work.” 

Returning to his rooms one night, he saw under 
the lamps at a street corner, a small, girlish figure. 
Its movements seemed so undecided that they at- 
tracted his attention. The slim figure stood a 
moment, then walked a little in one direction, turned, 
walked back, stood, and walked a little in another. 
Her undecided behavior attracted Dante’s attention. 
Coming forward, he raised his hat and spoke to her. 

“Can I help you?” he said. “Have you lost your 
way?” He could see the slim outline of her form in 
the lamplight, and as she raised her face he saw her 
dark eyes. She could not have been more than 
seventeen. The lamplight fell full upon her face, and 
in the light he saw her eyes were like Margherita’s. 

This sudden sight after months of trying to forget 
her existence. This vague, insufficient likeness was 
like a straw at which he caught. He had never had 
much to do with women and the child was young. 
The child-woman looked up at him. Her face was 
round with the roundness of youth, but it looked 
pinched. He thought, “I mustn’t frighten her.” 

“I only wanted to say, if I can be of any service, if 
you have lost your way, please let me help you.” 

“Thank you, sir,” said the little form, looking up' 
at him from the darkness. A curious smile came on 
her face. It was as if she were trying to assume a 


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256 

new role in which she was not yet fully proficient, for 
her next remark was in a more jaunty tone. 

“I am going east,” she said. “If you like, you can 
step along with me.” 

With that change of mood, Dante’s instinct taught 
him that this little actress had not quite learned her 
' part. 

“Where are you going,” he asked gently, then 
feeling that that was perhaps an awkward question, 
added, “I mean, what is your name?” 

His companion gave hirn a side glance. “Marie 
Louise,” she said walking on beside him. 

In the darkness Dante was conscious of her un- 
cultivated voice. It cured him of any tendency to 
romanticize, but he wanted to go with her to the 
next corner. He wanted to look under her hat and 
see her eyes. 

They walked a block without exchanging any 
remark. Under the light, Dante stopped and looked 
at his companion. He lifted the large brim of her 
hat. Her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. “You 
poor little thing I” he said. “You are only a child.” 

She did not draw away from him. She looked up 
^ at him as a little child might, who, in an unsym- 
pathetic world had found sympathy. 

“I am hungry,” she said slowly. “I have had no 
supper.” 

“Poor little thing!” Dante repeated. “Come 
along and we will get something to eat.” 

The night was misty and damp. It had been rain- 
ing and now and then a drop fell from the leaves of 


THE NEW WORLD 


2S7 


the trees. His companion was not in the least em- 
barrassed. They trudged along and at intervals she 
talked — ejaculatory remarks of her unspoken 
thoughts. “No one helps us. No one understands 
us,” she said. “You have just got to go along by 
yourself.” 

“You will feel better when you have had some- 
thing to eat,” said Dante. 

They passed into a swing door through a corridor 
into a large room. It was full of gilt and plush and 
marble tables. He looked at his companion. Her 
mouth was open a little as if the showy aspect of the 
environment pleased her. 

Dante made his way to an empty table. He did 
not ask her what she would have. He ordered and 
Marie Louise ate ravenously, not bothering to carry 
on a conversation while she did it, but she ate 
voraciously like a little animal that only does one 
thing at a time. Then she extracted a toothpick 
from a glass jar, leaned her elbows on the table, and 
began picking her teeth. That disconcerted Dante, 
but the mirror opposite to her reflected her small, 
pale face with its wonderful, luminous, dark eyes. 
As she looked at him across the table, it gave him a 
cosy sensation as if she were leaning up against him. 
He was lonely and separate from his race. Up in 
the gallery an orchestra played a hollow little Italian 
tune. This child had Margherita’s eyes, perhaps 
underneath her common manner, her uncultivated 
voice, was some trait of Margherita’s. The bright 
eyes met his, again he felt that cosy warmth, then by 


258 


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some queer flash of memory, stirred perhaps by the 
Italian music, he heard an echo of Giovanni’s voice 
— “A gentleman always plays the game.” 

Dante raised his chin the fraction of an inch. 

“Did you ever think of being a stenographer?” 
he asked resolutely. 

Marie Louise’s face struck him suddenly as tar- 
nished and sullen. 

“No,” she answered, not looking at him. “I 
can’t stick at anything.” 

It was after this question of his that the little 
actress remembered her part. She powdered her 
nose and looked about at the other tables. 

Dante paid the bill, and threading their way 
through the tables they went out to the street. They 
walked back in the direction of the place where he 
had found her. Presently, as if by mutual consent, 
they stopped to part. Dante felt her hand on his 
arm and saw her face upturned to his. 

“Would you like to kiss me good night?” she asked 
timidly. He could feel her hand twitching. In the 
darkness he heard her uncultivated voice and he 
could not see her eyes very plainly. He shook his 
head. He mustn’t hurt her feelings. So laying his 
hand on her fingers, he said gently — “I don’t think I 
have known you quite long enough.” 

The little figure drooped wearily. Suddenly it 
straightened itself. The wide, dark eyes looked up. 

“Then why did you pay for my supper?” she 
' asked. 

It was then that Dante showed his breeding. He 


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259 


took her into his confidence. A great aristocrat is 
never afraid of being too friendly to one in a lower 
position, because he knows that nothing can ever 
really lessen the distance between them. 

“Why?” repeated the little actress. 

“Because,” said Dante slowly, “you have eyes like 
someone I love very much.” 

The wide, dark eyes turned away, and Dante stood 
watching the little figure go back into the night. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


P eople say time heals all wounds. They say 
that in time the heart recovers, but they are 
blind and know not what they do not see. 
They have never forgotten themselves. They 
have never seen anyone who made them forget 
themselves. Love has roots far down in the dark, 
and its meaning is plain, that it takes you away from 
yourself. Wherever there is consistent effort of the 
will, wherever there is concentration, there may be a 
great work, a great life, but apart from love, the 
heart lies in the body like a dead, cold stone. 

With his notes, Dante sat down in his study to 
make his book, his message, the something that 
would show the meaning of his life, because every 
life has a meaning more or less helpful, more or less 
obscure, according to the quality of its mind and 
heart. 

Now the object of his book was to treat the prob- 
lems of life at the present day, and he felt that in dis- 
cussing these problems for popular digestion, he 
could not make a book upon each problem that had 
already been done many times, but he must synchron- 
ize the whole into a vivid picture, that would strike 
the imagination of the man in the street. So his 
first four headings were these: There is a picture to 

260 


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261 

be drawn. There is a case to be stated. There is a 
formula to be found. There is a method for its appli- 
cation. And the picture that he drew was the picture 
of the earth and the universe. The three thousand 
other worlds than ours, which the heavens unfold to 
the naked eye, and which differ from each other in 
character, size, strength, and mission. No two are 
alike, each has its daily duty and keeps to its path. 
Amid these countless whirling worlds the earth 
moves a thousand miles a minute, so fast that it 
appears to be standing still, and eight million years 
go by before the light of some of these worlds 
reaches ours. Who ordains and controls all this? 
How is harmony maintained? Whose law do these 
planets obey? 

The population of the universe in worlds is vaster 
than the population of the earth in human beings, but 
over against this picture of the universe, this har- 
mony, this peace, this keeping to an ordained orbit, 
he placed the picture of life on the earth to-day. The 
War, the jealousy, the injustice, the competition, and 
the corruption. 

That was the picture that he drew. 

And the case that he stated was this — ^The uni- 
verse is at peace. The world is at war. The universe 
is at peace because a mighty obedience is exacted 
from each to each by Authority. The world is at 
war because in the relations of man to man, race to 
race, nation to nation, there is no authority wise 
enough and powerful enough to impose obedience, 


262 


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discipline, order and that respect of each for the 
other, which alone can provide harmony. 

And in diagnosing the malady of the world, Dante 
attacked the Government, which is the outcome of 
public opinion, that is the will of the people. And he 
explained our inferior Government by the ill-nour- 
ished will of the people, which is made out of what 
it feeds upon, namely, daily news. The people are 
not told the truth, they are told what those in 
authority wish them to believe. 

Write this in the largest letters that are made. 
Who is responsible for war, for the High Cost of 
Living, for the friction of capital and labor and all 
unrest? Mainly and solely and wholly those who 
control the press. Those who feed to the minds of 
the people what they wish them to believe day by 
day. 

That was the case he stated. 

And this was the formula that he formed. He 
took two thoughts that the world knows well, upon 
which have been based so many ethics, so much 
philosophy. They are the text of the Old Testament 
and the text of the New “the Fatherhood of God and 
the Brotherhood of Man.” And he developed these 
thoughts first that we, in our turn, like the worlds in 
theirs, should show obedience and discipline in the 
ordering of our lives to the plan of the whole. And 
he went on to say that Brotherhood expressed in love 
of country should not mean love of one’s own country 
and hatred of every other; not only love of one’s 
own province, city or village, and hatred of every 


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263 


other. That is the animal law. The struggle for 
life. The essence of war. The survival of the fittest. 
But there should be mutual responsibility and respect 
between all the races under the sun. To each indi- 
vidual he would have taught, not only love of God, 
not only love of country, but the responsibility of 
public duty and sacrifice for the common good. His 
formula was education, the planting in youth of 
thoughts and ideals that help men and women to deal 
with each other and a civilization at one point of the 
world to deal with a civilization at another. Then 
there would be no more antagonism and no more 
struggle for supremacy. 

That was his formula. Faith, not Fear, as be- 
tween man and man. 

And in the method of its application, he suggested 
— First, that the Governments of all nations send 
each two representatives to a great council, an Inter- 
national Commission. That by vote at a meeting 
of this council, it be decided what thoughts and ideals 
were most necessary to instill into the minds of the 
generation now being born into the world, to insure 
and preserve lasting peace, order and happiness. 
That when the thoughts and ideals were definitely 
decided upon, the representatives of Government 
should each return to his own country and prepare to 
apply the same by the great Trinity of Education. 
And the modern Trinity £)f Education is comprised of 
the school, the motion picture, and the Press. These 
were to be controlled by the State so that the young 
mind at school, in the daily paper and in the theater, 


264 


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should receive constantly and almost without its own 
knowledge, the thoughts that were needed for the 
betterment of the world. To back up his argument, 
Dante cited Germany, that with a systematized prop- 
aganda, in two generations had created a national 
sentiment that resulted in the war of 1914. 

Into this book, around these thoughts, Dante had 
gathered the threads of his personal experience. He 
had set out to prove that the difficulties of life, which 
seem so insurmountable, so hard of solution, are in 
reality simple, the natural result, as is everything in 
this exquisitely balanced universe of traceable causes, 
and furthermore, with a consistent concentrated 
effort capable of amelioration. It seemed to him so 
simple that life might be raised on definite lines to 
a higher standard, only he felt one must begin with 
the young mind in its infancy. 

The book finished, he wrote at the end — ‘‘Mon- 
treal, 1919” — and sent it to New York to a pub- 
lisher. 


CHAPTER XL 


S uccess brings poise. From the moment that 
Dante’s book appeared the attitude of public 
opinion towards him altered. Some technical 
points about one or two of his statements were ques- 
tioned by the critics, but this only served to augment 
its notoriety and from the moment of its appearance, 
the success of the book was assured. He was in- 
vited to speak on the relations of Capital and Labor 
at the convention of the Workmen’s Union. Al- 
though not particularly a new thought, he took the 
stand that the main difficulty was always the failure 
of each party to see the other’s point of view. His 
debates at Oxford stood him in good stead, as did 
also the tremendous reading he had done in his 
youth. He spoke clearly, logically, and to the point, 
and made a good impression. It was after a few 
such meetings, that it was suggested that he contest 
a Conservative seat fallen vacant by the resignation 
of its member. There were so many arguments 
against this step, that he was on the point of declin- 
ing it. He felt himself so much more a writer than 
an orator, but being started on his career to go into 
Parliament was counseled strongly by his ambition. 
The hours of the Union Government seemed so 
265 


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undoubtedly numbered. In default of readjustment, 
the Farmers’ Franchise was abnormally favored, and 
there were many issues upon which he wished to take 
a firm stand. 

He stood for a strong Imperial Policy, a protect- 
ive trade, enlargement of Canada’s navy until such a 
time that disarmament was effected among the 
nations. Amicable relations with Canada’s great 
neighbor to the south, but a conserving of all national 
resources for Canada herself, and an absolute inde- 
pendence of ideals in all matters pertaining to trade. 
He did not wish Canada to follow too slavishly the 
methods of government of the United States in that 
it seemed to him that the Government at Washington 
was still not a perfect example of the will of the 
people. 

A great deal was talked about this election. 
Dante’s opponent attacked the Government Railway 
Policy, which, in a most ill-advised manner, was lay- 
ing a great burden of taxation upon the people. It 
was a strong card in his favor, the taking over of 
the Railway by the Government being extremely un- 
popular. Dante prepared himself for the struggle 
with every expectation of being vanquished. To his 
surprise he was returned with a majority of three 
thousand votes. His luck was in the ascendant. His 
star was rising. In the lives of most successful men, 
there comes a time when Fate, which has so far been 
obdurate, persists no more. They can actually feel 
the walls of resistance giving away. It is the moment 
of the passing of the Rubicon, the crossing of the cur- 


THE NEW WORLD 267 

rent; but this moment does not often come until a 
man’s life has behind it hours of honest effort. 

In a great life, there is no luck, there is no chance, 
there is only day by day, week by week, year by year, 
a gathering of forces which are so tremendous that 
all gives way before them. So the man who achieves 
success by effort and study is not generally elated 
when he arrives. That has been broken in him by 
the effort that he made. And even with a little 
recompense, he is apt to be satisfied, because he has 
learned not to expect too much. Men of our genera- 
tion live fast, and go hungry, yet a man needs just 
enough encouragement to give him enthusiasm to 
contiAue his work. 

Only two things in life take you away from your- 
self — love and work. The preservation and happi- 
ness of someone who is more to you than yourself, or 
constant labor in some occupation that is more to you 
than your personal comfort and happiness, more to 
you than the mere fact that your head may ache, or 
your back be tired. 

From the confused disorder of life, stand out facts 
and looking back, Dante knew that the times of his 
life which had sown what he was now reaping were 
his youth until his return to Canada, and again the 
two years in Canada, since his return from the war. 
The time of black fields had been his years in the 
Pulp Company, when without much effort, he drew 
a comfortable salary. 

Of his old friends, Payton was dead. Not a word 
of him had ever been heard. He left behind no 


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trace. Whether he had been taken prisoner, or 
buried in one of the great gashes of earth made by 
the bombs, they did not know. He was gone in the 
day of vengeance with the multitude. 

And Wickfield had developed into a quiet little 
man, who wore pepper-and-salt suits of clothes, the 
only sign of turbulence about him being that one 
sleeve of his coat was empty. Wickfield was im- 
mensely proud of his empty sleeve, and with his good 
hand, if he were engaged in conversation, he was 
constantly feeling his empty cuff. That was the sign of 
a timid man’s one approach to the heroic. And John 
Dowden was gone. And White-face Bailey, with the 
pointed ears of a fawn, had lately given out that he 
was going to marry Felicity. Felicity was just as irre- 
sponsible, just as gay. The curls over her ears were 
just as pretty, but it is rather doubtful that she could 
ever be to White-face what she was to John, because 
what a man gets from a woman depends so much 
upon what he brings. 

In the weeks that succeeded this announcement, 
Dante went often to see John’s mother. Her grief 
had made her very transparent. She had ceased to 
live. She was just passing the time. During the war, 
she had formed the habit of knitting, a habit that she 
continued, and Dante always identified his conversa- 
tion with the click, click of her steel needles. It was 
a queer companionship, but behind it was the sense 
in both that their meetings were in memory of John. 
And yet they seldom spoke of John. They spoke of 
Felicity and her new plans, of Pansy and the differ- 


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269 


ence Felicity’s new plans would make to her, but it 
was only on those evenings that Dante’s pale, dark 
face wore a particularly gentle expression, that Mrs. 
Dowden could bring herself to mention John. It 
was then that Dante realized the proud loneliness of 
that transparent figure, with the white ruffles edging 
the throat and wrists of her black gown, and the little 
gold cross on her breast. 


CHAPTER XLI 


F or the first six months of his new office, 
Gabriele Borghese attended to his work with 
the help of his secretary, and gave himself up 
to the duties of his new position. He appeared in 
public, calm and apparently indifferent to Mar- 
gherita’s absence. In replying to the servants’ ques- 
tions as to what was to be done with Margherita’s 
rooms in the house he had taken, he told them that 
she might be expected to arrive at any time. Gabriele 
could not have said why, but as time went on, he 
grew uneasy. He knew Margherita was in the 
country with her grandmother. That her grand- 
mother was ill and weakened by her anxiety during 
the war. Very conclusive reasons why Margherita 
should stay and yet Gabriele was so uneasy that he 
realized he could no longer keep up this semblance of 
indifference, and he determined to go to Foto. 

The news of his coming was not greeted with any 
enthusiasm at Foto. Fitzmaurice frankly did not 
care for him, and Lady Hopetoune had been so won 
over by Margherita’s patience and gentleness during 
her illness, that if it had been possible for her to 
admit herself in the wrong, she would have admitted 
the grave error of her granddaughter’s marriage. 
The solemn moment of Gabriele’s visit arrived 


270 


THE NEW WORLD 


271 


and he found himself in a very antagonistic atmos- 
phere. Margherita met him in the hall. She shook 
hands with him, but offered no warmer greeting. 
With a sudden determination he bent forward and 
kissed her on the cheek. Nina, entering from the 
morning room, saw Margherita raise her eyebrows 
slightly as she drew away. 

“Les beaux esprits sont rencontre,” said Borghese, 
turning to shake hands with Nina. 

‘T have given up wit and taken to skin food,” said 
Nina. “It requires less effort and is twice as effica- 
cious. If you find me very dull, let your eyes rest for 
a moment upon the smoothness of my cheek. As a 
dinner companion, I am a complete rest for a tired 
mind.” 

“I shall look forward to being on one side, or the 
other,” Gabriele remarked. 

Gabriele had come by the late train and Sampson 
was instructed to take him to his room, as there was 
just time to dress for dinner. 

At dinner, the conversation turned upon general 
topics. Lady Hopetoune did not come to the dining 
room, she had her dinner carried to the drawing 
room, on a tray, and there they found her. Gabriele 
was completely baffled by the new antagonism to him- 
self, that he found in what had once been his familiar 
circle. He was perplexed and puzzled and did not 
know what to make of it. As he and Fitzmaurice 
sat over their port wine, once or twice he felt Fitz- 
maurice’s eyes fixed upon him, cold and condemna- 
tory, and he felt low spirited, a thing that rarely 


272 THE NEW WORLD 

happened to him, but a thing that he determined to 
brazen out. 

Had he been able to decipher that changed attitude 
was constituted of a definite cause. The story of his 
attentions to other women had filtered at last to 
Foto, enraging those who loved Margherita. A man 
cannot stray and then think to tear that up by the 
roots and fling it away. When it is least wished for, 
when it is least acceptable, the past will rise. 

“This coldness towards me will diminish,” Bor- 
ghese said to himself. 

“Well, Granny,” said Fitzmaurice coming in from 
the dining room, “have you finished the book?” 

“Yes, dear,” answered Lady Hopetoune, address- 
ing herself to her grandson. “The author is, in my 
opinion, a trifle too democratic, but it is a most inter- 
esting book. Of course I have never been to Amer- 
ica,” she added hurriedly. 

“What book is that?” asked Borghese. 

“It is a book written by my Canadian friend, 
Dante Ricci,” replied Fitzmaurice. “It is called 
‘The International Commission.’ It goes a step 
farther than the League of Nations, and it is having 
great success.” 

In the looking glass, Borghese observed Mar- 
gherita’s head, but her face was averted, he could not 
see its expression. A cruel look came into his eyes. 
Margherita had taken an interest in this young man 
and he had been enamored with her. This, then, 
was the key to the new attitude. He pressed his thin 


THE NEW WORLD 


273 


lips together. This was something that he under- 
stood. 

As Fitzmaurice gave his arm to his grandmother 
to help her to her room, he asked her again about the 
book. 

“You know you were prejudiced against him, 
Granny,” he remonstrated, “but I saw his mettle long 
ago.” 

For fully a minute. Lady Hopetoune was silent 
before Fitzmaurice heard her say — “I thought him 
too interested in Margherita. You know those 
things are repugnant to me,” she added. “I like the 
boundaries. The closely defined boundaries.” 

A smile quivered over Fitzmaurice’s face. “I 
never told you, but I sent for Margherita to come to 
London to see him before he went.” 

“That was very ill-advised of you,” Lady Hope- 
toune said sternly. They had reached the door of 
her room. She took her hand from his arm. 

“Why did you do that?” she asked suddenly. 

Fitzmaurice bent down and touched her forehead 
with his lips. “Because, dear,” he said, “although I 
am her cousin, I love Margherita.” 

Lady Hopetoune’s face darkened, but only for a 
moment, she was sure of Fitzmaurice, then she patted 
his arm. 

Up the stairs came the sound of the Rhapsodic 
Hongroise. Nina was playing. 


CHAPTER XLII 


M ARGHERITA had taken off her dress, and 
in a dressing gown she was sitting in a low, 
chintz-covered chair under the lamp. Her 
maid had brushed her hair and she had sent her to 
Nina, who was making what she called economies, 
and having spent a fortune on skin foods, was doing 
without a maid. 

Her room was the same room that she had used 
when, as a child, she first came to stay with her 
grandmother. It was at the end of the long wing 
and it had windows on two sides. There was 
nothing down that corridor except a staircase leading 
to a little tower room, where as an undergraduate, 
Fitzmaurice made chemical experiments. He still 
occasionally used the tower room to read and study. 
It held his collection of stamps; his collection of 
butterflies, and all his very favorite books. The 
chimney from Margherita’s room continued up to 
the tower room and before its fireplace was a com- 
fortable, deep sofa where Fitzmaurice lay and read. 

Margherita sat in a low chair, turning over the 
pages of Dante’s book. Her face was very soft and 
glowing and she was thinking of a November after- 
noon in town in Fitzmaurice’s room, when two 
feverish hands had clung to hers and someone had 


274 


THE NEW WORLD 


275 


said, “Some day you will hear that I have done won- 
derful things.” As she turned the pages, she touched 
them lovingly. He had loved her. He was far away, 
and yet she was not jealous of the women he was 
likely to meet. Their love was for all time. He was 
hers. Her knowledge of the world made her just. 
She understood the rareness of this feeling. It 
always had seemed incredible to her that men should 
hunt a love affair. It was the wind that blew where 
it listeth. 

As she sat brooding with her thoughts, footsteps 
came down the long corridor. She had not seemed 
to hear them. The handle of her door turned, very 
gently. Her back was to the door, but the slight 
sound made her look up. She caught sight of Bor- 
ghese in the mirror. 

“So,” he said coming into the room. “Not in bed 
yet?” 

Margherita paid no attention to his question. 

“To what,” she asked coldly, “am I indebted for 
this visit?” 

“I have not analyzed my feelings,” Borghese said, 
“but it is generally permissible for a man to call upon 
his wife.” 

She looked up at him with a clear gaze, but at that 
moment, Borghese, who stood in front of her, caught 
sight of the book on her knee. 

“So,” he said again, “I thought as much.” 

“I really don’t understand you,” Margherita said 
shrugging her shoulders. 

“What I wish to say,” he continued coldly, “is that I 


276 


THE NEW WORLD 


must put you on your guard. I will not have your 
interest in this young man attracting attention.’’ 

For a moment she hung her head, then she looked 
at him. ‘‘Don’t be stupid, Gabriele. I have not 
seen him for two years.” 

“I am not jealous,” he continued. “It is a senti- 
ment which I despise. But I know the signs, my 
dear, your glowing face, your sparkling eyes.” 

There are men who imagine that no woman can 
resist some show of tenderness, some form of caress. 
Borghese was of this kind. In his determination to 
break down the wall between them, he bent and 
caught her by the arm. 

She rose to her feet, but she heard the sound of the 
book falling to the floor. It acted like a spur. 

“Signs 1” she said scornfully. “There are things that 
men like you know and there are things that you do 
not know.” 

“Allow me to finish,” interrupted Borghese. “I 
know the signs, but you must conduct yourself with 
more decorum. And I expect the return of my wife. 
I want you back,” he added in a softer voice. 

“Never,” she answered. She herself was sur- 
‘ prised at the calm way she said it. 

“You will live all your life on the thought of a 
Colonial?” 

“Well, what of it?” she asked. “I cannot change 
my nature.” 

Borghese looked down at her with eyes that had a 
sort of anger and a sort of cunning. 

“Why?” 


THE NEW WORLD 


277 


Her control nearly gave way. It was on the tip 
of her tongue to say: “For him, there is only one 
woman and I am she. Women are faithful to that,” 
but it remained her thought, too dear to her to be 
spoken. “I cannot change my nature,” she repeated. 

Again the look of cunning came into Borghese’s 
eyes. 

“Don’t be unreasonable,” he said coming close to 
her. 

Good gamblers cut their losses, but Borghese 
never admitted a loss. “Come home,” he said to her 
with persuasion. 

As Margherita looked at him, she thought how 
she had always disliked his small, red-rimmed eyes. 
Borghese saw the expression of criticism in her face, 
and it enraged him. 

“Then by heaven I’ll make you I” he exclaimed in 
a louder voice. 

Margherita felt him coming near her, she felt him 
put his arms around her, and turning her head away, 
she gave a little cry. 

It was then Fitzmaurice came down the corridor 
on his way to the tower room. Margherita’s door 
was half open. “How dare you!” she cried. “How 
dare you! What right have you to bother me?” 

Fitzmaurice, pausing in the corridor, was in no 
mood to ignore the sound of that cry. Fitzmaurice 
was on the way to the tower room to think over what 
he had said aloud for the only time in his life that 
evening to his grandmother. At the sound of that 
cry, Fitzmaurice knocked and pushed the half-open 


278 


THE NEW WORLD 


door. And as he stood in the door, his face was not 
transcendent, it was not one man ousting another, 
but it produced an impression of strength and inter- 
est apart from any personal feeling. 

The blood rushed to Borghese’s face and he drew 
away as if he had been stricken. 

Fitzmaurice spoke. ‘‘Granny wants you, Mar- 
gherita,” he said slowly. His face was unduly stern 
for the message he gave. 

Margherita almost smiled, it was so like Fitz- 
maurice to avoid a scene. 

“You come between husband and wife,” said Bor- 
ghese. There was a tremor of over-mastering ex- 
citement in his voice. 

“You will have an opportunity to continue your 
conversation to-morrow,” answered Fitzmaurice. “I 
beg of you to go now, my grandmother wants Mar- 
gherita.” 

“I must think it over and decide what to do,” 
Borghese said in the manner of a threat, as he passed 
Fitzmaurice and went down the hall. 

As he left the room, Margherita gave a little 
sigh, almost a gasp, then she stooped and picked up 
the book that had fallen to the floor. 

“I cannot change my nature,” she repeated again, 
as if that little sentence made clear the shape of this 
dark problem. 

“Why should you?” 

“There was never anyone more lovable than you, 
darling,” replied Fitzmaurice, but neither he nor she 
noticed the word that inadvertently fell from his lips. 


THE NEW WORLD 


279 


“Granny gave me the message about wanting to see 
you some time ago, I was a little late in giving it. Per- 
haps you had better not go to her after all,” he inter- 
posed gently. “It is quite my fault.” 

Fitzmaurice kept up the lie, if she did not want 
to confide in him, she needn’t. “Granny thought she 
might have a good night,” added Fitzmaurice, as he 
went out, but Margherita did not hear what he said. 

Fitzmaurice walked to the foot of the little stairs. 
“I must say something to comfort her,” he said to 
himself. “It is hard for me to be easy. It is hard 
for me to come out of myself. I am very reserved, 
but I must try to comfort her.” He turned and 
went back to her door, which w^as still open. She was 
still standing dressed in a white chiffon dressing 
gown with a white fox collar. She seemed tired and 
her face had lost its habitual animation, but as she 
glanced at him, her eyes softened. 

Then Fitzmaurice said something that was quite 
different from the speech he had prepared. 

“Nothing is forever,” was what he said. Although 
she did not know it, the speech was for himself as 
well as for her. 

Margherita shook her head. She was only too 
well aware of the truth. She was not one of those 
people who, by easy adjustment, can shed their vows 
and make others. Why pretend? She sank wearily 
into the chair and stayed some moments motionless 
before she answered; 

“Life drives one in, Maury. And what the girl 
believes, the woman believes. One cannot change. 


28 o 


THE NEW WORLD 


It’s no use being sorry for me. You and I can speak 
the truth to each other. Divorce is all very well for 
those who think it is very well, but it is not for 
Granny,” (she looked quietly at him and smiled) 
‘‘and not for you, nor yet for me. I shall never go 
back to Borghese, but I shall not ask for a divorce.” 

Fitzmaurice replied hurriedly, “You must have a 
good night’s rest. And we will talk about this in the 

morning — I wish ” the words did not come. “I 

want to comfort her,” he said to himself, “but what 
she says is true.” In spite of his reserve, Fitzmaurice 
understood people’s thoughts and feelings very well. 
Standing there, all life seemed suddenly wretched to 
him, a thing where the worst man wins, because the 
best man voluntarily loses. 

“Do not grow sorry for me. I see in your eyes 
you are sorry for me, but don’t be sorry.” 

She lifted her beautiful eyes to his face. 

“Maury, I cannot change my nature. I must make 
my way through life as I am now, a little of this, a 
little of that, and the days pass, but I need no pity, 
because I have had the only thing that matters. Per- 
haps at the time, one hardly realizes, but looking 
back, one knows.” 

She lifted her hand and blew him a kiss, and feel- 
ing like a man who is ready to give his life for a 
cause, only to find his life is of no value, he walked 
away up the steep stairs to his tower room. 


CHAPTER XLIII 


I N Canada Dante was working and thinking 
much of his dream of The New World. His 
book had been the first plank across the stream. 
In it he had felt his own way quite as much as he 
had endeavored to instruct others. And he felt that 
as with his book his ideas had come to him gradually, 
so it would be with the work of his life, that it would 
come gradually like the germinating of a strong, well 
grown plant. 

And the thought he wished to bring more forcibly 
to the minds of his contemporaries was the thought 
of the collective life. Each star in its own place. 
Each man in his own sphere, controlled by the whole, 
contributory to the whole and part of the whole, for 
the collective life of the community is everything, the 
life of the individual apart from the community, 
matters only to himself. 

War exists primarily because there are unorgan- 
ized parts of the world which are coveted by the 
great powers. If a great power cannot go to an un- 
organized part of the world and help a lesser power 
to settle its disputes without antagonizing some 
other great power, who fears that its prestige may 
thus be endangered, it is impossible to eliminate the 
menace of war. But if there could be established an 


281 


282 


THE NEW WORLD 


International World Commission permanently, sit- 
ting with a specific mission to legislate, there would 
be no cause for interference by any special one of 
the world’s great powers in the difficulties and quar- 
rels of the smaller states. 

Arbitration by a perpetual commission repre- 
sentative of the states of the world. 

It was thus that he would go a step further than 
the League of Nations. 

However wide a man’s vision, life must be taken 
on its own terms, taken as it is, and one dare not 
ignore its troubled spirit. A definite change is 
needed. The philosophy of Being seems insufficient 
for its crowded complexity. 

The war was predictive of a change of tempera- 
ment. It was the forerunner of infinite Doing as 
distinct from Being, of a clear type of action and it 
was part of the function of the war that it laid waste 
a wayward growth of the philosophy of Being, the 
deification of man’s self. 

And the New World, which has cost so dear, the 
world which is being born out of the misery and 
suffering and bloodshed of the war, ought to be a 
world of fewer contrary tendencies, of less pitiful 
antagonisms, where the problems of men and 
women, man and man, and state and state are settled 
with a determining factor for the good of all. 

That was Dante’s Message, the outcome of his 
life. His lonely youth, his discussions with the 
Fabians at Oxford, his slight part in the war, his 


THE NEW WORLD 283 

failure to establish an ordinary domestic home had 
led him to realize that he must work for his race. 

So far, his life did not show very much from the 
outside. He knew his own weak points. As a cen- 
tral figure, he lacked humanity, he had almost no 
friends, but he was not depending on his influence, or 
his personality for achievement, he was depending on 
the message that he had to give. He meant to give 
it and let it take its chance. If it succeeded his 
reward would be in the fact that he had served. If 
it failed, still he had the knowledge that he had tried 
to serve. 

But as he walked up Parliament Hill to take his 
seat in the House of Commons, again as in youth he 
had that sensation of swelling in his soul’s depths, 
that sensation of power, only now it was quieter, less 
egotistical, more restrained. He was not seeking his 
own fortune, he was not working merely for his own 
happiness and well being, he was not merely an in- 
dividual, he was a part of the collective whole, very 
tiny, merely one of billions and billions of atoms, but 
part of the great scheme that always was and is for- 
ever. 

“To be so strong no wind can blow you down,” he 
said to himself, as he passed through the great door. 

In the lobby he heard someone speak his name. 
He turned and found himself face to face with 
Father Morot. 

The Abbe had grown a little redder in the face, a 
little more thick-set, his air of perfect satisfaction 
with himself was a trifle more pronounced. His life 


284 


THE NEW WORLD 


still had two main springs, this world and the next. 
He bowed condescendingly. 

“I find you in most brilliant surroundings,” he 
remarked. He spoke to Dante as though he had 
only seen him a moment ago. 

Dante gave a faint smile. “My antagonist,” he 
thought. “Everything is relative,” he answered. 

The priest regarded him over his gold-rimmed 
glasses. 

“Here you will find,” he said, “what I have coun- 
seled so long.” 

Dante looked at him inquiringly. 

“A temperate moderation,” said the priest, still 
looking at him over his glasses. “Compromise.” 

Again Dante gave a faint smile. It did not go 
with the thoughts that had just beset his mind on 
Parliament Hill. 

The Abbe saw the smile and he resented it and 
prepared to return it in kind. 

“I must be mistaken,” he ventured, “but I thought 
that little love affair with Margherita would clip the 
wings of the young Idealist.” 

He waited for Dante to speak, but Monsieur 
TAbbe Morot had now met his match. Dante was 
ready for him at last. 

“On the contrary,” Dante replied slowly, looking 
the priest straight in the eyes, “I have always main- 
tained that if Nelson hadn’t loved Lady Hamilton, 
England would never have won the battle of Trafal- 
gar.” 

Without waiting for an answer he nodded and 


THE NEW WORLD 285 

passed down the corridor to take his seat in the 
House. 

% 

So the curtain falls upon the two people whose 
frail love affair has been the background of this 
story. They are the same, and yet changed. 

In Margherita is the same love of family, the 
same fixed determination to preserve the family 
ideal, but when she walks in the rose garden at Foto, 
she sometimes thinks of a young man who first came 
down from Oxford one Easter term. And the people 
who know her best, say they find in her something 
that was not always there. Love deepens a woman. 

And Dante is the same as he was at Haileybury, 
gifted and aloof. There is much of the boy in him 
still. A man’s love is protective, but Dante’s love 
has never grown to that. His love is a boy’s love. 
It is shy and strong with a deep, strong longing to 
serve. So we leave him with Tolstoi’s dream of a 
New World founded on the “Brotherhood of Man” 
and his own unspoken hope, that some day the broad, 
determining lines of life might shift and he would 
find himself again with Margherita. 


THE END 












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